Amplifying the Voice of the Patient

LabMind

Within our current healthcare institutions, patients’ voices are often drowned out by the voices of providers, scientists, and industry. Andrea Downing’s life work is to fix this. As a BRCA1 cancer previvor and a patients’ rights activist, she was a spokesperson for one of the plaintiffs in the U.S. Supreme Court case that ultimately overturned gene patenting. Years later, while moderating an online patient support group, she discovered a major privacy vulnerability in Facebook, which led her into cybersecurity research. In this interview, she chronicles her journey and lays out her vision for patients as cocreators within medicine and medical science.