iGuard, a drug safety system that monitors patient medications for drug interactions, safety alerts and recalls, today announced it has registered 2 million subscribers in just over 2 years - matching the early growth rate of the popular social networking tool Twitter.

"Putting this growth in context, it took Twitter two years to get 1.3 million registered users"

Introduced at the October 2009 Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco as "potentially the largest registration health site you've never heard of," iGuard.org has just registered its 2 millionth user from the United States.

"Putting this growth in context, it took Twitter two years to get 1.3 million registered users," said Dr. Hugo Stephenson, founder and President of iGuard. "Our 2 million users are even more surprising when you consider we require users to provide a lot more information about their health at registration. So we are blown away by how many patients have endorsed the site by registering and actively participating.

"Pundits have claimed that health care would be the next big thing on the internet. Surprisingly, although over 60% of people go online for health information^[1], most experts agree that optimistic predictions for the growth of personal health records and electronic prescribing have fallen far short of reality. iGuard appears to bucking this trend by offering consumers a simple, up-front value proposition to patients -- 'Do you wish to get personalized safety alerts and recalls on your medications?' -- and a range of choices for user registration through pharmacies, hospitals, partner web sites and even, where necessary, paper based forms."

Even more significant than iGuard.org's 2 million user base is its contributions to improved health care since being launched by Quintiles in 2007:

• Distribution of drug safety alerts and recalls to over 500,000 Americans;
• Production of over 14 million personalized drug interaction reports;
• Delivery of timely information to 1.3 million Americans affected by at least one significant potential drug-drug or drug-disease interaction;
• Real time effectiveness and side-effect tracking for over 300 prescription and over-the-counter medicines;
• Involvement of over 73,000 iGuard users in 92 clinical studies, helping to lower the cost and increase the speed of bringing better medications to market.

Patients Taking The Lead

Founded in 2007 by Dr. Hugo Stephenson, a physician and internationally renowned drug safety expert, iGuard is a free, personal drug safety monitoring service that now provides 2 million consumers and caregivers with timely, personalized information about drug-drug interactions, drug-disease interactions, medication safety warnings, breaking safety news and medication recalls that may affect their health. In return, patients provide feedback on their medications to help researchers learn how to treat diseases better and minimize medication side effects. In 2009 alone, iGuard users have contributed toward 92 medical research studies – helping to develop new drugs for such diseases as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and diabetes.

Interested in Participating?

Patients interested in helping medical research or staying up-to-date with the latest information on drug interactions, safety alerts and recalls should register with iGuard.org at http://www.iGuard.org.

Researchers interested in working with iGuard.org patients to accelerate their own research can contact research@iguard.org.

Those interested in staying up-to-date with developments on iGuard, including patient numbers and emerging patient-centric clinical insights, can follow iGuard on Twitter (http://twitter.com/iGuard).

^[1]"The Social Life of Health Information Report" from the Pew Internet & American Life Project and the California HealthCare Foundation