Hi, Charlie Copeman here, CEO o and founder of Cancer Life. I just thought this,

Today’s blog, we would talk about Five underutilized and underappreciated services that patient support services that cancer patients have access

And are available that sometimes that cancer patients aren’t aware of. So the first one is, if you’re going through cancer, your journey, one of the biggest challenges with mental Health. Obviously the nature of the fear The anxiety, the worry

Can have a dramatic impact on your mental health and how do you manage that. There’s, from some statistics, 50% of patients experience some form of depression during their journey. That’s completely un understandable and rare. Rarely of those, only 10 to 20%

Actually get treatment or seek out Help for tho those those needs.

Folks need to understand that if you’re in a, some type of cancer center, you know, typically, they do have social workers that are available that you can schedule time with to go over. I wouldn’t call them necessarily getting a psychiatrist, but those services are where they can help you. One, navigate, you know, your decision-making, navigate your relationships, which is a huge stressor for cancer patients.

And you really can get the support you need from folks that really understand how it works, what they’ve been through, you know, these folks have seen it all. So, number one social worker, social support services inside of cancer centers is really an untapped area to which you can seek help. Number two is inside those cancer centers. If you’re having financial stresses around getting to and from your appointments or any of the other, you know, financial burdens associated with your treatment, talk to the cancer center and ask to see if they have assistance programs. So a lot of them do, right? There’s a lot. Sometimes it’s, it’s through their nonprofit, you know, or there are other partners like the American Cancer Society that they partner with that has access to some of those services. Third, if you’re in a clinical trial in terms of financial services and support, look to those clinical trial partners.

The sponsors of those partners typically do have almost like a debit card that you can, that they give you to handle secondary expenses. That’s a good area where you can seek support. So if you’re in a clinical trial or planning to be ask about patient support services associated with that clinical trial, like I said, they’ll give you a debit card, you know, I don’t know, a thousand dollars a month, $500 a month to handle those secondary expenses. Also if you’re having trouble paying for medications, you know, doctors really don’t make treatment decisions around, you know, what’s the cost to the actual patient. They don’t know what your insurance is and what your, what the, what they’ll cover and what they’re not covered. They don’t know what your copay is. But if you’re under financial burden and your doctor has switched your medication to some newly approved drug or some other, you know treatment that’s highly specialized, which means it’s more money talk to the pharmaceutical company that your drug that is manufactured by the drug, talk to the manufacturer.

They’re called patient support services Manufacturers. Give away billions of dollars in free drugs every year. There’s a company called the Lash Group in which you can log onto their website, fill out some information, and you can sign up for the, get your drugs for free. Essentially, it’s a real, frankly, a pain in the to go through the process. They’re gonna call you a million times to see if you’ve taken your medication. They’re gonna ask you a million research questions, but, you know, in terms of getting something for free it’s something that, you know, patients need to learn about. So go to your specific, specific pharmaceutical company and you know, log onto their website and, and find out if they have patient assistance programs. And the final one, I just would like to say in terms of nutrition, this is a big area that’s happening now, is that, that the cancer centers are providing nutrition services through partners.

You know, at the very least, a lot of the time there are nutrition shakes. So if you’re gaining, you’re having trouble keeping on weight, you’re having trouble eating because it’s, you get too nauseous, you know, they do have those nutrition shakes that I believe they partner with Nestle who provides these, these shakes. You can get those for free. So anyway, that’s, that’s five services. I think, you know, every cancer patient going through treatment in order to get support, you know, realize this, these are areas in which you can explore.

All right, so anyway, thank you so much.

Philadelphia PA– CancerLife, a leading provider of digital support and resources for cancer patients and their families, today announced a partnership with Eversana, a full-service commercial solutions provider for the life sciences industry, to apply for FDA Breakthrough status.

The partnership will leverage Eversana’s expertise in regulatory affairs and commercialization to support CancerLife’s mission of improving the lives of cancer patients by offering innovative and accessible digital solutions.

“At CancerLife, our goal is to empower patients and their families with the information and support they need to navigate their cancer journey,” said Charles Coltman, CEO of CancerLife. “By partnering with Eversana, we are taking a major step forward in our mission and bringing our innovative solutions to patients faster that meets the highest level of clinical validation on the market.”

Eversana will work with CancerLife to provide regulatory and commercial support for submitting their product for FDA Breakthrough status. The Breakthrough designation is a process for expediting the development and review of medical products that demonstrate the potential to substantially improve existing treatment.

“Eversana is proud to partner with CancerLife to support their mission and bring innovative solutions to patients in need,” said Martin Culjat, Head of Digital Health at Eversana. “Our expertise in regulatory affairs and commercialization, combined with CancerLife’s innovative digital platform, will help bring life-changing solutions to patients faster.”

About CancerLife

CancerLife is a leading provider of digital support and resources for cancer patients and their families. Our cancer support platform is validated to raise Quality of Life. Their mission is to empower patients and families with the information and support they need to navigate their cancer journey.

About Eversana

Eversana is a full-service commercial solutions provider for the life sciences industry, offering a range of services, including regulatory affairs, commercialization, and market access. Eversana’s mission is to bring innovative solutions to patients faster, by supporting life sciences companies in their efforts to bring new treatments to market.

Transcription of video:

Hi, Charlie Coltman here, founder and CEO of Cancer Life. Today’s announcement is that we have some exciting news Our clinical trial data, which we presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in December. I’ve been taking those results and you know, passing them around to some industry experts. And today we’re announcing that we are partnering with Eversana a 400 million life sciences consulting firm, and Mar Martin Culjick, who runs their digital health team, who took a look at our results, who was blown away by our expertise in improving quality of life for cancer patients, looking at the clinical trial design, looking at the results across 117 different area codes, which was really significant because as we know that disparities of care across cancer continue care continuum is a huge problem. But we raise quality of life by 14.2% from the EQ five VAs scores which is a self-reported score, as well as a 9.9 improvement on the index score. So both

Of those numbers contained in the EQ five were improved. So we are going through breakthrough status, which is exciting. We believe that  digital medicine or digital therapeutics are the, is the next wave of digital health

As you go through treatment, you’ll be, you know, prescribed a treatment regimen in terms of pharmaceutical treatment, but also you’ll be given a companion app. And cancer life can improve quality of life by cor collecting the right data that you can physically share with your care team as well as get the social support that you need during treatment. And both of those things improves physical functioning because we were able to reduce the symptom burden of each patient by 78%, as well as the social support you and emotional support you get, which improves mental health for patients as they go through the journey. So exciting news to partner with Eversana and looking forward to, to applying for that breakthrough status and announcing that probably in the next 60 days. Anyway. Thank you friends.

Cancerlife was founded by Charlie Coltman who lost his best friend to pancreatic cancer. He founded the company with a mission to improve the lives of cancer patients through the use of innovative technology. Its flagship product is a cancer support app that provides patients with various tools and resources to help them manage their condition and navigate the cancer journey with online social support network. This can be especially beneficial for cancer patients, who may have compromised immune systems and may be at higher risk of infection. Cancerlife can also help patients in rural or underserved areas who may not have access to specialized cancer care, connect with other support resources online.

The CancerLife app also includes a symptom collection and racking feature that allows patients to record and monitor their symptoms over time. This can be helpful for both patients and their healthcare providers, as it can provide valuable insight into the effectiveness of treatment and help identify any potential issues. Since roughly 50% of all symptom and side effect issues go unaddressed, which can degrade QoL, the Cancerlife app is directly addressing this huge problem. But most importantly, Cancerlife is a social network like Facebook which creates a powerful engagement experience for each user.

CancerlIfe has been conducting extensive research on how its platform measurably improves QoL. Recently it announce the results of its two-arm randomized control trial in which was conducted nationwide and enrolled 499 participants with breast cancer, aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of CancerLife’s platform in improving patient outcomes and experiences.

The trial enrolled participants via Facebook ads and randomly assigned them to either the intervention group or the control group. The intervention group received access to CancerLife’s platform, which includes a social support platform and novel symptom data collection tracking, and treatment planning tools. The control group received standard care. The results of the trial were highly encouraging. A significant main improvement effect of intervention favoring CancerLife was found for both the EQ-VAS (F_{(1, 5)} = 22.1, p < 0.01) of 14.2% and 9.9% on the EQ5-D (F_{(1, 5)} = 14.3, p < 0.01). 

In addition to these individual benefits, the CancerLife app can also support the delivery of cancer care at a population level. Since Cancerlife does not need to be implemented inside a cancer center, it has the potential to scale into any care setting, including community oncologists, which represent 70% of the market. In their clinical trial results, patients were recruited from over 117 area codes which means the outcomes were achieved regardless of care location. CancerLife therefore can address disparities of care, so long as those patients have cell phone or internet access.

Despite the potential benefits of the CancerLife app, there are also challenges associated with its use. One concern is the issue of privacy and security, as patients may be reluctant to share sensitive personal and medical information online. There is also the potential for a digital divide, as not all patients may have access to the necessary technology or may not be comfortable using it.

To address these challenges, it is important that the CancerLife app is developed and implemented in a way that is sensitive to the needs and preferences of cancer patients. This may involve providing training and support to help patients feel comfortable using the app, as well as ensuring that appropriate security measures are in place to protect patient data.

Overall, the CancerLife app has the potential to greatly improve the way we support cancer patients, from improving access to care to empowering patients to better manage their condition. While there are challenges to be addressed, the benefits of this tool are clear and it is important that we continue to explore and invest in its development and use. In conclusion, the CancerLife app can greatly improve the lives of cancer patients and make the healthcare system more efficient. If Cancerlife can get the partnerships necessary to grow its users and scale into health systems, the platform could be a game changer to cancer care delivery. Cant wait to see what happens next!

Charles L. Coltman IV, Ignatius Beard, and Scott A. Irwin, MD

Background

Collecting patient-reported outcomes have been shown to improve outcomes in patients with cancer; however, implementing methods to collect and utilize these data, such as remote patient monitoring, has been limited due to staffing resources, workflow disruption, EMR integration, and cost barriers.  A self-care patient engagement consumer app is one solution to help alleviate these barriers. The purpose of this study was to demonstrate that the self-reporting of symptoms by patients using a novel patient engagement mobile application, at any time, from anywhere, would have a meaningful impact on symptom burden while improving Quality of Life (QoL) without the aforementioned barriers, most importantly workflow disruption.

Design

A blinded, two-arm, randomized, controlled trial of CancerLife was conducted.   Participants with breast cancer were recruited nationwide via Facebook ads and asked to complete an online qualification survey. If qualified, they received a text message with a link to complete the consent and enrollment process, then randomly assigned via 1:3 ratio to control or the CancerLife intervention.  Overall health state (EQ-5D) and QoL (EQ-VAS) were compared with usual care every three weeks from 9 weeks to 24 weeks post-baseline. Virtual monitoring of common cancer-related symptoms (symptom count) was also done for the CancerLife group, with participants asked to share their app-generated printed reports w their care team at their consultation appointment.

Results

A total of 1006 participants were recruited online, and 499 completed the registration, consenting process, and download app procedure and were enrolled. A total of 189 participants in both groups completed the 24-week study. Participants that enrolled represented a wide national geographic area inclusive of 117 different area codes, which suggests the solution can address the challenges of care disparities.

A significant main improvement effect of intervention favoring CancerLife was found for both the EQ-VAS (F_{(1, 5)} = 22.1, p < 0.01) of 14.2% and 9.9% on the EQ5-D (F_{(1, 5)} = 14.3, p < 0.01).  Post-hoc paired t-test comparisons indicated significantly higher mean differences at 18 and 21 weeks (p < 0.05) on the EQ-VAS and at 21 weeks (p < 0.05) on the EQ5-D, with similar trends at 9, 15, and 24 weeks on the EQ-VAS and 15, 18, and 24 weeks on the EQ5-D.  Further, the CancerLife group demonstrated a significant decrease in symptom count (mean Δ=-9.11, -78.1%, t=-2.62, p<0.001) at 24 weeks.

Conclusions

This study demonstrates that a patient engagement app with a novel data collection platform could lower symptom burden and improve overall QoL with minimal barriers to implementation.  Since remote patient monitoring systems are hard to implement inside cancer care settings due to costs, IT system integration, and workflow disruption, a direct-to-consumer-based app, which can be used in any care setting by any patient, and accessed through any connected device, shows significant promise to ameliorate symptom burden, raise overall QoL, and address disparities of access to care and care outcomes for cancer patients. Providers may consider this as a tool to improve their population quality metrics, care and care utilization outcomes, disparities, and patient satisfaction scores without significant startup, maintenance, resource, and workflow costs.

Philadelphia, PA (June 2, 2022) – CancerLife, a digital therapeutics company and the Validation Institute, announced the results of its two-arm, fully randomized Phase 3 clinical trial today, which concluded that the consumer cancer app was proven to raise the quality of life in cancer patients by 14.3%. This marks the first cancer social support platform that does not require remote patient monitoring or is needed to be implemented inside a cancer center to raise QoL. CancerLife is now available for download in the app stores, and now any patient can improve their QoL regardless of where they live.

CancerLife’s goal is to improve the experience for any cancer patient regardless of where they receive care. By using social behavioral therapy and novel data collection reporting, CancerLife helps patients change how they think and experience their cancer diagnosis while identifying and lowering the symptom burden by 66%. This improves their quality of life, regardless of the care location. “We believe doctors will recommend CancerLife to their patients with these clinical trial results as they are under constant pressure to improve the patient experience.” Doctors will benefit because CancerLife raises QoL without any workflow or investment in time by their cancer care staff.

“What sets us apart from any other digital therapeutics company is that we are the first company that combines the mental and physical impact of cancer treatment inside one platform,” said Charles Coltman, Founder and CEO of CancerLife. “14.3% may not seem a lot, but it translates to feeling better one extra day a week, and for cancer patients, that means spending more time with family and friends”.

Validation Institute, an independent third-party organization, has validated the study results by having its epidemiology team review the study’s design, data sources, and analysis approach. Validation Institute works with some of the most highly valued digital health companies, such as Hinge Health and Virta Health.

“Two armed, randomized trials are rarely attempted in the digital health industry and CancerLife has raised the bar with these results,” stated Benny DiCecca, CEO of Validation Institute. “The analysis clearly demonstrated the impact that the CancerLife solution can have in patients’ lives.”.

CancerLife can also provide its platform to other digital health, advocacy groups and pharmaceutical companies in both a reseller model or “white label” solution, including other diseases with high symptom and QoL burden. “We are ready to partner with other companies who want to leverage our technology within the cancer care and specialty disease space.” said Mr Coltman.

About CancerLife:
CancerLife was founded by Charles Coltman, who lost his best friend in 2013 to pancreatic cancer. CancerLife helps patients change how they think and experience their cancer diagnosis, whilst identifying and lowering the symptom burden. This has a dramatic impact on quality of life, regardless of the care location. CancerLife is now live in the app stores. https://cancerlife.com/install

About Validation Institute:
Validation Institute is an independent, objective, 3rd party organization on a mission to improve the quality and cost of healthcare. Based in Woburn, MA, the organization is made up of a network of health benefits purchasers, health benefits advisors, and healthcare solution providers focused on delivering better health value and stronger outcomes than conventional healthcare. www.validationinstitute.com

Hi friends, Charlie here. I want to talk about an exciting topic that is really taking over both the digital health space, health care, as well as wall street. And that’s the exciting developments in the use of psychedelics for mental health treatment? I think in the last 90 days we seen three companies go public and they’re almost viewed while they are viewed as you know therapeutic biotech companies. And the revolution in the science has actually been around for awhile. I guess you call it a revolution that it’s more a revolution of adoption and acceptance than it is about some type of breakthrough. Just a little history of the psychedelic movement where it’s really it’s really starts. I think with Johns Hopkins has a school for psychedelic studies and I have been working for almost 10 years now on studies that associate with post-traumatic stress disorder using psychedelics and guided therapies.

So keep in mind, this is at this stage, it’s not, we’re not talking about, you know, just handing somebody a tab of acid and saying, good luck with that, all that. This is using certain dosages, low dosages that are then paired with therapy, so guided meditation and or guided therapy. So, you know, the psychedelics and this we’re talking about psilocybin MDMA, which is ecstasy. You know there’s a few other ones, but essentially, you know, the science is amazing. I mean, it’s just basically, if you combine, you know, getting a therapist to key in, on some trauma I E and with vets and, and you know, post-traumatic stress, the psychedelics allow the brain to kind of gain a perspective and there’s almost a rewiring of the neurons with that trauma. And it is just a kind of a doorway. It’s a re rewiring process that is dramatic.

It is a literally like rewiring a computer with natural compounds, so that that’s, what’s incredible. And Johns Hopkins, they did a five-year study with posttraumatic stress disorder. We’re talking fives, I’m sorry, three sessions you know, guided, guided trip sessions with therapy therapists. And after five years, something like 75% of the participants had no indications of post-traumatic stress had no issues with depression. It was just, it’s unbelievable. So that’s kind of started a whole revolution and, you know, now these psychedelic compounds are being experimented with whether they’re actually making artificial compounds at campus pathways and law in England, or, you know, just experimenting with magic mushrooms you know, with therapy. So where does this all sit with cancer patients and my company, and what’s our vision, what’s our kind of stance on this whole thing. And I think I will say it right now.

I think we, as a company and as you know, patients, you know, who are dealing with end of life, you know, we should be at the forefront of both, either partnering with companies who are trying to develop these therapies from a clinical trial perspective you know, or having our own sort of services associated with end of life, palliative care hospice. I mean, I think going forward, I’m talking about, you know, 12 to 24 months from now, you know, our movement is going to be into end of life care. And I think that what needs to be done and how I see it evolving is, is it’s, it’s a preparation, it’s a process, it’s a preparation. And these types of therapies have shown to load low lowering anxiety, give great perspective. And I can’t, you know, I believe it’s going to be big.

I think it’s going to be a standard of care for hospice treatment, probably in the next, you know, three to five years. You know, I want to tell those two stories associated with cancer patients and psychedelics one is a woman who had pancreatic cancer diagnosed pancreatic cancer twice. I mean, and still living today. She was part of the joy of the Johns Hopkins study. And I, she and I spoke at length about her experience. And she said that the experience completely wired her rewired, her brain, that she felt less fear about death than she ever had. She told me just jokingly. She said, honestly, every day I wake up and I look myself in the mirror and say, one day you’re going to die, but not today. And for someone that has faced such a horrible diagnosis, I mean, that’s, that’s magical to me.

Number two is even more personal story about a friend of mine that I was introduced to. I want to say seven years ago his name was Dan and Dan had childhood brain cancer around. I want to say when he was 10 to 12 years old. And through the treatments, you know, two years of treatments, two years of surgeries it left him really kind of, you know, sort of limited in, in his intellectual capacity. So to speak and years later, almost 20 years later, he got rediagnosed with the same cancer. The cancer had come back and that’s what I was introduced to him. And we spent a lot of time together. It was very clear to me that a lot of his friends pull back after this diagnosis kind of like, you know, it was almost like they had decided he was already gonna die and they didn’t want to deal.

So I spent a lot of time with him. In fact, I used to go down and hang out with him every Wednesday when I was headed down to the city for therapy, I used to sit with him for four to five PM almost every Wednesday just to talk. I mean, just, he needed a friend and we spent a lot of time. And one of the saddest moments for him was when he told me I’m really depressed. And I said, why? He goes, because they told me the tumor is shrinking. And I said, oh my God, Dan, like, what do you mean? He’s like, I’m just done. I feel like I have no life. I feel like I’m lonely. I feel like I don’t want to live like this anymore. And, you know, he was really in a, in a, you know, a dark place.

His parents were well aware of his emotional status. And, you know, I tried to really respect him as a person and wishes and, and just tried to listen and be supportive a few weeks later. I actually took him down to my mother’s beach house for the weekend. And, and we did a mushroom trip together. I had, I’d known that, that this, you know, had shown evidence of improving, you know, mental outlook and, you know, he was all for it. And I can tell you, you know, after that experience, he, his whole mood changed. I mean, it was dramatic. His parents say, Charlie, like, you know, what, what did you do with a weekend? And I’m like, well, we just talked a lot. That’s all I could kind of disclose. But it was at that moment where I realized there was something, there was something to this, and that’s actually what started me on my education of, of silicide bean and the work with Dr.

Paul Stamets out in his facility has his research Institute out in the Northwest. So I, you know, unfortunately about six months after that experience, Dan committed suicide he had fallen back in and, you know, everyone had done everything we could to, to sort of try to convince them otherwise, but that was his choice. And I’m certainly not condoning suicide as a method for folks. But I can understand. I mean, all I can say is I can understand when we I’ve said this before in my previous post about symptom management, quality of life and depression, it’s like when you have no quality of life and you have no function, you lose meaning and you fall into depression and that can lead to a place of, of frankly giving up. So the bottom line from my perspective and my company’s perspective is we are, you know, 1000% supportive of the use of psychedelics for end of life cancer died, you know, treatment.

I, you know, I want to lead in this area and I’m, you know, I’ll say to any, any psychedelic research companies that are involved, who want to get in the cancer space, we are open for business to try to partner up with you guys to, to both find patients and run studies. And I’ve got some amazing contacts in the space. And it’s something that I can see, like I said, in five years, where part of the service offering is, you know, in, in some type of hospice end of life care would be the use of guided psychedelic therapy. So that’s my take on it. Wishing all the best and take care.

Well we finally did it we hit 100 daily active users!! That might not seem like a lot for many people but when you consider that cancer patients are roughly 2% of the population this is significant in that the typical target point for Silicon Valley to invest in consumer apps is 10,000 daily active users, so we’re on our way up to 1000 daily active users which is going to be our major milestone we hope to hit in September.

 For more information around daily active users and Silicon Valley please see the posts and interview with Jeremy Lou from lightspeed ventures.

https://www.vox.com/2017/11/18/16673982/app-growth-investors-jeremy-liew-snapchat

John Wayne Cancer Institute

Charles Coltman

CEO Founder of CancerLife

CancerLife announces results of pilot study of its digital therapeutic which showed a 25% improvement of QoL metrics and reduction of symptom burden by 70% with its most active users. Expands study to 1,000 and adds randomization to its virtual clinical trial.

Introduction

There is no doubt that patients diagnosed with cancer live longer due to advances in immunotherapy and more early detection methods. Cancer and its treatment, however, produce multiple symptoms that significantly distress patients and impair function. Such common symptoms and often go undetected can include fatigue, depressive symptoms, cancer-related pain, and other bodily changes. These symptoms can delay or lead to premature treatment termination, depression, poor quality of life outcomes, and lead to hospitalizations and emergency room visits to manage these symptoms.

Patient reporting of symptoms or patient-reported outcomes (PROs) has been a suggested approach to improve both the control of symptoms and improved quality of Life metrics and even a dramatic improvement in overall survival* (Basch 2017). There are several ways to collect these symptoms (PROs), but none are required as part of the standard of care. Patient portals have attempted to use their electronic communication to capture this data when the patient initiates an engagement. Still, evidence has shown the patients rarely engage on these systems frequently enough to capture enough data to build a comprehensive picture of the patient’s health status. Health systems and cancer centers have responded by piloting remote patient monitoring studies that have initiated engagement from the provider to the patient using text messages and or email communications. ( Basch 2017) Remote patient monitoring systems offer significant benefits and have shown to improve outcomes and lower hospitalizations.

However, remote patient monitoring presents significant workflow disruption to a busy Cancer Center that responds to patient’s needs when needed. Community oncology practices also are limited by the number of resources available to answer to these remote patient monitoring systems and therefore are not practical in real-world community ecology settings.

Our study’s purpose was to show that empowering patients with a digital health platform called Cancerlife, will lead to more effective, longitudinal data collection, thereby improving quality of life metrics. Our platform also solves the particular problem of patient engagement by allowing users to share their health status with other patients, which provides meaningful social support during treatment. It’s this specific social interaction that generates significant emotional reward while at the same time enabling the level of data collection of patient-reported outcomes needed to impact the quality of life outcomes and metrics.

We hypothesized that by empowering patients to collect their data and providing print- out reports that could be shared manually with the patient’s care team, more effective communication and management of symptoms would lead to a higher quality of life scores.

Fundamentally, we asked a simple but essential question: Do patients have the ability to collect their own symptoms and share this data with their care team using a novel digital health solution?

Finally, this study’s key focus was to assess the engagement metrics within the digital health solution Cancerlife focused on the number of times a week, patients shared their health status without being prompted. Also, the number of times patients engaged with other posts, comments and likes similar to other social networks like Facebook, and we also looked for correlations between the number of times patients engaged on the platform and their quality of life scores.

Our goal was to show meaningful improvement in outcomes metrics by using and engaging the CancerLife digital health solution and sharing the data collected with the care team.

We hypothesized that using digital data capture and communication platform can improve quality of life and enhance physician–patient interaction in patients with cancer and their caregivers. Our study showed that CancerLife optimized self-monitoring and reporting of symptoms and showed promise in reducing symptoms in highly engaged participants.

Our study showed that empowering patients by using a digital information and communication platform that could be logged into at any time (24/7) would create similar data collection observations that could present to the care team at the time of consultation without the need for clinical intervention. 78 Patients in our study logged onto CancerLife and posted and shared their health status on average 2.2 times per week for up to 20 weeks. This data highlights the benefits of the digital communication platform showing a reduction in symptom burden in patients diagnosed with cancer. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) collected longitudinally by the patients are equally effective at lowering symptom burden and improving the patient’s quality of life. For those who were the most active (top 25% of users) on the Cancerlife platform, saw an average improvement in QoL metrics (FACT-G survey) was 24.7 % while reducing their symptom burden by 79%.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these results show the importance of digital communication and improving quality of life and symptom burden using the CancerLife platform. One of the key goals of this study was to prove that cancer care outcomes can be achieved when the patients can collect better data themselves and present their data to the care team at the time of consultation.

Although Remote Patient Monitoring systems have clear benefits, the resource constraints on the care team’s daily workflow make implementing these RPM systems a burden to many health systems or independent offices, especially in the community oncology setting. Our theory has been that the issues with symptom management within cancer care is partly a data collection and sharing problem. Empowering patients with a platform to easily collect and report this data back to care teams without the workflow burden of asynchronous messaging would achieve meaningful outcomes. Ultimately the ideal state in any high burden disease is real-time communication with the patient’s care team and doctor. But in practice, this is highly unrealistic. Even in the most patient-centric practices the cost and burden are incredibly high. CancerLife is designed to empower patients to share this burden in an easy-to-use app that creates reports that are shared manually at the time of face-to-face or online consultation. We believe Cancerlife achieves meaningful outcomes with limited workflow and operations burden on practices and ultimately will be preferred by cancer practices with limited time and resources.

After the study conclusion and analysis, we are expanding our current study protocol and changing the QoL measure to the EQ-5 European scale, which will be better suited to a digital solution like Cancerlife. Furthermore, we add a randomization component to our virtual study and expand to over 1000 participants. We believe that after the results of this randomized control trial, we will be the first and only direct to consumer app that is clinically validated to improve QoL through better patient driven symptom management and engagement.