October 2021
About Belong
Belong.Life is a global platform that harnesses the best of science, community, digital health and people’s desire to connect with each other in confidence to ask questions around priority health concerns. People going through health journeys often have extraordinary insights; their collective wisdom leads to patient-provider conversations that sustain and save lives.
Belong.Life started in 2016 and is now the creator of the largest online community of people with cancers in the world. Knowing that people with shared health concerns want to connect and learn from each other, they’ve expanded to serve the communities of those with multiple sclerosis (MS) and other conditions.
Much of the participatory community information is used to improve scientific and medical communications: Belong.Life draws on patient voice to bring anonymous and aggregated data to ASCO and other leading peer review forums worldwide.
Health Tech World Interview with Eliran Malki, CEO of Belong.Life
Health Tech World Correspondent Gil Bashe shares his conversation with Eliran Malki – health technology pioneer, social platform visionary and Belong.Life co-founder and CEO.
Q: As a successful global technology entrepreneur, what inspired you to launch Belong.Life?
Eliran Malki: I’ve seen cancer’s impact on families, including my own. I lost my grandfather, my aunt and my uncle to cancer. The other two Belong.Life co-founders also lost close relatives to cancer. We saw that it was time to change the way people connect, converse and care. Cancer takes hold of people’s lives and consumes those closest to them. It was hard for my family members to share what they were going through, even with loving caregivers; they were protecting us, protecting themselves, and there was no clear path. We made mistakes trying to guess what was coming next and what they wanted. Cancer is a challenging and pressing project.
We realised we had to create an effective, conversational, real-time connection for patients, families, providers and passionate pioneers looking to improve care and treatment.
We have proven that our platforms can also enhance communication and the sharing of knowledge for advocacy and professional organizations, and our newest self-managed platform “i-Belong” is now also providing them the option of a self-built, self-managed patient community, an environment that supports peoples’ engagement goals.
