RareShare, a startup dedicated to building online awareness about rare medical disorders, has announced that it has launched an early beta version of its health 2.0 social networking platform designed to bring together patients, families and healthcare professionals to share information and personal knowledge about rare diseases.

While rare disorders may seem to impact only a small portion of the population, together they affect over 30 million individuals in the United States and Europe alone. In the United States there are as many as 1,500 diseases that qualify for orphan/rare diseases status and an estimated 5,000 to 8,000 diseases qualifying in the European Union.

“Our goal is to build a network of micro-communities where people can help each other by sharing firsthand knowledge about living and being affected by these medical disorders,” explained Eric Steele, Co-Founder of RareShare. “By launching an early-beta version of RareShare, we hope gain further insight about our initial user-base to help improve the services and tools offered through RareShare,” he added.

The Site is currently organized into micro-communities, each dedicated to a specific rare disorder. RareShare members can join these micro-communities to begin collaborating with others. Presently, the RareShare network hosts over 500 different micro-communities and is expected to expand to over 1,000 micro-communities by the end of the summer.