The Top Five Alzheimer's Online Communities: Treato Ranks Top Forums to Help Patients and Caregivers Navigate Complex Digital Support Landscape

NEW YORK, Nov. 30, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Timed to Alzheimer's Awareness Month, Treato, a leading consumer healthcare online destination, announced their first annual list of the top ranked Alzheimer's online communities. This list is the first in a new series of community rankings from the company.  Online healthcare communities have become a trusted source of information for patients and caregivers affected by a disease.  Consumers come to these communities looking to share information on their conditions and treatments as well as seek emotional support.   To date Treato has identified and indexed more than 3,000 of these online healthcare communities.  Out of all the Alzheimer's communities, Agingcare.com took the number one spot based on the total volume of Alzheimer's posts over the past year from U.S. based traffic.  This community also has the highest number of contributing authors, with authors frequently discussing topics relating to inverted family roles, mental stress and legal issues.

Top Five Treato-Ranked Alzheimer's Communities:

#1 Agingcare.com

#2 AlzConnected.org

#3 Alzheimers.org.uk

#4 TheAlzheimerSpouse.com

#5 Healthunlocked.com

Across all communities, the Alzheimer's Association's AlzConnected.org has the highest engagement rate with every author participating in approximately 3.2 threads.  However, TheAlzheimerSpouse.com has the highest number of posts per thread with an average of three responses per thread.  By contrast,  the Alzheimer's Society's Alzheimers.org.uk has the highest number of threads out of all the communities over the past year.

A majority of conversations across all communities are caregivers describing loved ones symptoms, including associated behavior that make caring for those with Alzheimer's challenging.  Caregivers are also discussing more directly how the diagnosis has affected their own life and caregivers are seen comforting and supporting each other.  When discussing their personal feelings, participants are frequently discussing feeling overwhelmed and defeated.  They are also discussing specific obstacles such as getting their loved one to accept outside care as well as wandering, sundowning and mealtime.  Tactics for dealing with the disease such as trackers and memory clinics are among top discussions as well as treatments such as Aricept and Namenda and clinical trials. In addition, early onset gene testing is commonly being discussed among children who think their parents might have the disease.

"Alzheimer's is an incredibly stressful disease to manage for both the patient and their caregivers," says Ido Hadari, CEO of Treato.  "We hope that by identifying and ranking Alzheimer's communities across the web, we are able to help everyone touched by this disease find the community that best meets their needs."

To find out more about the Alzheimer's community rankings please visit Treato Trends.

Methodology:

TreatoVoice is a unique data asset that continuously collects and analyzes more than two and a half billion patient and caregiver conversations happening across the Internet in real-time to understand what patients are saying about their experiences with their conditions and treatments.  Within TreatoVoice, we have the ability to rank healthcare communities.

To determine the ranking of the top online Alzheimer's communities, Treato collected and analyzed posts from more than 3,000 communities.  These communities were ranked by highest volume of posts about Alzheimer's over the past year from U.S. based traffic.  Within the top five communities, more than 218,000 posts were evaluated for specific attributes.

About Treato:

Treato™, the leading source of real health insights from millions of real health consumers, uses patented analytics and big data technology to turn billions of disparate online conversations into meaningful social intelligence.  With two billion posts analyzed and continuously expanding, Treato has partnered with 9 out of the world's top 10 pharma companies as well as numerous other multi-national pharmaceutical companies and healthcare organizations.   Treato.com, its consumer website, helps millions of visitors each month.

Treato is privately held with offices in Israel, New York and Princeton, NJ. Investors include Reed Elsevier Ventures, OrbiMed Partners and New Leaf Venture Partners, among others. For more information please visit http://treato.com 

Allyson Noonan
Media Relations Manager
+1(858) 245-7256
[email protected]

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SOURCE Treato