Dear Readers,

Get ready for a fresh design overhaul coming soon to DiabetesMine.com as we officially become part of the Healthline family, beginning in January 2015. The announcement of this acquisition went out over the news wire today!

We’re very excited about partnering with Healthline, a San Francisco-based “growing group of passionate individuals who work each day to make the people of the world healthier through the power of information.” Mike and I look forward to becoming part of an established health media company, with the additional resources and camaraderie that brings. I will take on the fancy-sounding job title of Editorial Director, Diabetes & Patient Advocacy, while Mike will remain Managing Editor for DiabetesMine.

But don’t worry — content-wise, the site will remain unchanged, with myself, Mike, Wil and our other contributors continuing to bring you daily diabetes news, interviews, product and book reviews, opinion pieces, cartoons, and snarky asides, etc., the same as we always have.

I will remain editor-in-chief, and this site will continue to operate as an autonomous news source, aiming to embody “the voice of the informed and curious patient.” Beginning in mid-January, our entire site including all previous content dating back to the origin of DiabetesMine in 2005 will be found at our refreshed Healthline-hosted home: www.healthline.com/diabetesmine.

Note that our DiabetesMine Innovation Summit and D-Data ExChange events will not become part of Healthline, but will continue to be operated independently by myself and select advocacy partners.

Meet Healthline

Some fellow bloggers may recognize Healthline as the folks who run a “Best of the Health Blogs” competition each year. In fact, they’ve honored the ‘Mine as the best in diabetes for the past several years before we were even talking about this new venture together.

As we’ve gotten to know them, we’ve learned that they’re a small but growing privately held company founded in 1999 by one Dr. James Norman, an endocrine specialist and Internet health education pioneer, under the original name YourDoctor.com. In 2005 — the year DiabetesMine hit the web — the company was re-launched as Healthline Networks. Deloitte has ranked Healthline Networks as one of the top 500 fastest growing technology companies in North America every consecutive year from 2010-2013.

They currently have about 130 employees, including a full editorial team of 20 full-time writers and editors covering health topics ranging from acid reflux and ADHD to skin disorders, Crohn’s disease and multiple sclerosis (MS).

You may recall that the ‘Mine announced a similar partnership with another online health company called Alliance Health a few years ago; the difference here is that Healthline is a media company, dedicated to producing high-quality health content on a daily basis. Our kind of folks! We look forward to good synergy, as well as expanding our reach amongst the roughly 25 million consumers who visit the site per month, we’re told (which boggles the mind).

btw, this kind of collaboration is new for Healthline, a big step towards bringing more “real” conversation and patient perspectives to their universe — and a testament to their commitment to improve the content they are bringing to people with diabetes and other health conditions.

From our side, we see this new relationship with an established health media company as a great opportunity to connect more people and even the general public with the kind of authentic, personal conversations happening in our community.

 

Why Not a Non-Profit?

We should let you all know that we spent the better part of last year learning about the nonprofit world and its requirements, and came to the simple conclusion that fundraising is not our bailiwick at DiabetesMine. And we don’t wish to ask our readers for donations.

There are so many non-profits in the health and diabetes space already and more seem to be materializing all the time, even as some long-standing groups have reported their struggles in trying to raise money while keeping up their missions.

We’re more comfortable functioning as a small, nimble, cause-driven social enterprise that reinvests profit into our editorial and advocacy programs.

 

The DiabetesMine Charter: 10 Years Strong (and Still Going)

To be clear: we stand by our charter to act as an unbiased, independent voice for the diabetes community, asking the tough questions and pointing out discrepancies wherever necessary. And having some fun along the way.  We’ll continue to say it like it is, and encourage input and questions from ALL parties — our colleagues in the online community, other patients and friends and family thereof, people in the diabetes industry, the Health 2.0 community, and healthcare at large, and so on.

Hoping to do it bigger and better now? Not without your help… We’d like to extend a huge Thank-You to our loyal readers over the last 10 years (YES, I SAID TEN YEARS!)… it’s really amazing to think bak on that very first post way back in February 2005, and see how much has changed.

As always, we’d love to hear from you. Got a question, idea, suggestion, gripe or request? Please be in touch. If I’ve learned anything from reporting community-style on my illness for the last decade, it’s that EVERYONE has something valuable to offer.

Together we can change the world, right? Or at least keep changing the experience of living with chronic illness for the better.