Cancer is a major cause of death globally. Despite the enormity of the situation, cancer treatments are often impacted by impending challenges. A prominent challenge is the more or less fragmented nature of oncology treatment. Oncologists have linked the scenario with possibilities like a reduction in overall recovery, higher costs, indulgence in unnecessary procedures, or even substandard care with the situation.

Besides, the fragmented industry can make it complicated for patients to gain detailed and accurate information at various stages of the treatment. Patients often have to navigate a dense landscape involving multiple entities, including payors, providers, and other care-based associations while undergoing treatment. Patients struggle to connect with their care providers in a timely fashion. There are cancer types that are irreversible with early diagnosis and proper treatment.

Also, The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated the long-standing workforce shortage in healthcare while simultaneously catalyzing greater patient adoption of digital tools.

Navigating Cancer (NC), a Seattle, WA-headquartered enterprise retains an in-depth focus on these defining drawbacks. The NC digital health platform addresses both needs by bringing together stakeholders across the healthcare ecosystem to drive effectiveness and efficiency for cancer patients and oncology staff.

“Navigating Cancer’s mobile patient engagement solution enables patients to have a clear place to turn to communicate with their care teams and access the information they need to leverage high-end treatments. Payors, providers, and employers can improve the experience of individuals living with cancer and reduce the cost of cancer care at scale,” informs Bill Bunker, CEO.

NC’s mobile-first platform is leveraged by over 2000 providers to enable 1 million patients annually to improve care communications, get access to educational materials, and receive expedited care. The solution has been able to increase patient engagement, improve medication adherence, and reduce patient costs to make life easier and impart quality care for cancer patients.

Navigating Cancer support and services teams bring deep oncology expertise to practices, payors, and life sciences companies to ensure they can effectively deploy and utilize the firm’s solution to improve care and reduce costs.

The Distinguishing Feature

“Navigating Cancer is used to improve patient engagement for over 1 million cancer patients every year making it the most proven and widely leveraged digital health platform in the entire oncology arena. This real-world use of Navigating Cancer by patients sets us apart from all other patient engagement solutions in cancer care. NC is used broadly due to the depth of our functionality, strong integration with EMRs, and broad adoption by cancer care providers,” adds the CEO. 

Navigating Cancer is committed to health equity initiatives and reducing the digital divide for cancer patients. The enterprise has published documents based on extensive research to contribute to the scientific knowledge in this domain. The knowledge has been leveraged extensively into its digital tools to ensure equitable access for cancer patients.

Navigating Cancer was selected to be part of Amazon Web Services Health Equity initiative to enhance its Health Tracker product to incorporate routine screening of social determinants of health (SDOH) issues among cancer patients.

Patients commonly experience debilitating symptoms related to disease and treatment. Unmanaged symptoms can worsen, contributing to diminished quality of life, emergency room visits, hospitalizations, and even early demise. Patient symptom management optimization can facilitate reduced toxicity, improved quality of life, medication adherence, and overall survival. Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) can characterize and reduce patient-reported symptoms. The growth of ePROs has been remarkable in this scenario.

Health Tracker is an ePRO tool developed by Navigating Cancer with inputs from major cancer centers to enable frequent and regular remote symptom reporting for patients on active cancer therapy. These patient-reported records are available immediately to a care coordination dashboard and stratified by level of risk, enabling triage nurses and other healthcare providers to provide immediate care to their patients who are at high risk and require interventions.

After the Health Tracker application was introduced by the clinical team at Texas Oncology, and the patient was invited to participate, upon acceptance of participation, they received guidance from the interface. Technical support was available to patients, and patients were encouraged to continue normal communication with the clinical team regarding adverse symptom reporting even when using the application.

The Way Forward

Navigating Cancer has expanded its focus to include payors and employers in addition to the life sciences and provider customers. This expansion will enable access to more patients and provide better patient experiences and more efficient care delivery.