Guest blogger Paul Wicks from PatientsLikeMe explores why Open Access is not just for scientists.

A number of arguments have been made as to why generating political attention for this issue is important for science, but it wasn’t until I read Tom Webb’s blog post onNature Networks entitled “Confessions of an Open Access Agnostic” that I realized we might be missing an important point that we at PatientsLikeMe have been observing recently: open access is most critical for patients.