Why Curbside.MD?
From The Beatles to the A-Team, Burt & Ernie, and the staff of Seinfeld, sometimes diversity comes together with a chemistry that just makes sense. They may not always see things in the same light, but so long as they share a common mission in the end things seem to fall into place. This has been my experience in creating curbside.md. Working with this team has been a rewarding and fulfilling undertaking as I've grown and been witness to the growth of my colleagues. We all came with very diverse backgrounds but the vision has been a unified one to leverage technology for the sake of enhancing medical awareness.
The paths that led us to this juncture are varied and all contribute to a communal responsibility behind every aspect of curbside.md. Personally, my drive began about 10 years ago when I lived in Arlington, VA in a time between college and graduate school. I had the privilege of being a primary medical caretaker to Lorenzo Odone, the focus of the movie "Lorenzo's Oil". For those unfamiliar with the movie, this is the story of a boy that comes down with a debilitating genetic disorder known as Adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD). At the time when his symptoms began there was no known treatment and very little was known about the condition itself. Reluctant to accept what was believed to be inevitable, Lorenzo's parents (Augusto and Michaela Odone) undertook the mission of discovering a way of saving their child. Without any medical background between the two of them their perseverance paid off when they discovered a treatment to halt the progression of this neurological disease. Twenty years later, Lorenzo's Oil is widely used to save children from ALD, and Lorenzo lives as evidence to the strength of human resolve.
My personal relationship with the Odones was a big factor in a drive that saw me through many years of research and graduate work. Michaela and I stayed in touch through the years and I spent a significant portion of my time in graduate school giving lectures and presentations to increase awareness of the Odone story with the hope of motivating students to dream and to question everything. The underlying goal behind my education has been a desire to discover ways for improving medicine. Where raw science couldn't be reasoned I turned to technology for assistance – anything to further my pursuit.
Then came Praxeon, a talented team, and curbside.md. It’s no coincidence that we have decided to focus on neurology first. Supporting us is a long list of families and organizations with similar causes, all of which fall under the umbrella of the Myelin Network. Each of these groups is committed to the dissemination of resources and information in order to help those that need them most: people faced with untreatable, incurable, or misdiagnosed ailments. A universal complaint from people in these situations is a lack of clarity and consistency across medical practices. A big factor here is that doctors are confronted with a surge of publications, making it impossible to stay current with modern developments -- there’s only so much time in a day. And so we turn to technology. Our aim is that curbside.md will fill this gap, joining all of the people working to save lives with the most critical information to make that possible.
Our first release of curbside.md is a tribute to the many families that have suffered and are suffering through debilitating neurological diseases. We hope that providing a medium for exploring the world of medical evidence will help advance healthcare in the same spirit that the world witnessed through the devotion of two parents for their young son.
- Nick
