Between 30% to 50% of most cancers instances are preventable, in keeping with the World Well being Group. Precluding the development of most cancers can save sufferers and payers cash and result in a greater high quality of life.
Feyi Ayodele, founder and CEO at CancerIQ, sat down with MobiHealthNews to debate CancerIQ’s choices and the way healthcare organizations use its expertise to detect and thwart the acceleration of most cancers in sufferers prone to the illness.
MobiHealthNews: Are you able to inform our viewers about CancerIQ?
Feyi Ayodele: CancerIQ is an organization on a mission to actually increase entry to the most recent improvements in most cancers prevention, early detection and therapy.
MHN: And the way does it do this?
Ayodele: We do this by ensuring we’re actually totally integrating genomic drugs into routine care. The extra we be taught concerning the relationship between most cancers and our genes and different components because the science evolves, we should always have the ability to act on that information. Basically, what we do is we make it in order that your on a regular basis supplier can use that data and design a customized care plan.
MHN: What position does digital well being play in your providing?
Ayodele: So, how we have achieved it really goes again to form of a founding story. So, I began this firm after working with my mom, who’s a world-renowned breast medical oncologist and most cancers geneticist on the College of Chicago, which is admittedly one of many founding members of this preventive oncology program.
And what I acknowledged as she was making an attempt to scale this program past the College of Chicago into their associates is that numerous the associates mentioned they did not have the time, they did not have the information, and, you realize, they finally did not have the assets to do issues the best way my mom was doing issues on the College of Chicago.
So, I form of work with the specialists within the discipline … to automate and digitize numerous the method of preventive oncology, beginning up entrance with automating the household historical past knowledge assortment, numerous stuff you gather from sufferers in order that we’re saving suppliers time in gathering data to resolve the information challenge.
We’re actually a content material engine that has all the newest, most cutting-edge scientific tips and serves these up for suppliers and sufferers. And likewise automating the continued administration course of. My mom had a full crew of navigators that form of known as sufferers that had been at elevated danger, ordered their MRIs, adopted up with them as a result of they should do one thing that is much more time intensive than different populations, and we have automated that course of as effectively.
So, primarily, we have taken a scientific service and we digitized it, which is, I believe, the definition of digital well being.
MHN: How are healthcare programs utilizing CancerIQ’s choices?
Ayodele: One of many first issues that they are utilizing CancerIQ to do is to actually increase the genetic service or launch a genetic service.
So, they’re placing our software program within the arms of the suppliers who could also be educated to do that already, and thru that course of automation they had been in a position to double their service capability or increase it to extra sufferers. In order that’s a method that well being programs are utilizing it.
The opposite means that well being programs are utilizing it’s they’re really totally counting on CancerIQ to launch that new service inside their group. So, we’re increasing the genetics workforce by really giving our software program to suppliers who aren’t educated in genetics, and thru automation, and once more, that the content material that we have got by it, we will flip your on a regular basis supplier into that MacArthur Genius award-winning medical oncologist like my mother.
MHN: How does CancerIQ enhance entry to genetic testing?
Ayodele: The best way CancerIQ is increasing entry is we’re primarily offering a extra high-resolution view of a affected person inhabitants. So, suppliers know these ones that want genetic testing want one thing above and past the usual of care as a result of in the event that they accurately establish these sufferers, they’re actually low-cost methods for sufferers to entry these companies.
MHN: What’s in retailer for 2024?
Ayodele: So, in 2024, we’re capitalizing on a few actually sturdy headwinds for CancerIQ.
There’s been some latest information about how ASCO [American Society of Clinical Oncology] has modified its tips and made it so that everyone with breast most cancers ought to get genetic testing. What does that imply? That signifies that extra sufferers are going to get entry, and we will discover extra mutation carriers this yr than we ever have.
The second factor that is actually thrilling for CancerIQ is that there is rising consciousness of those later-stage youthful sufferers who’re getting most cancers.
So, for 2024, numerous what CancerIQ is targeted on is not only getting folks entry to testing or figuring out them in danger, however really actually deeply investing in the best way that we handle these sufferers at elevated danger, as a result of we will have a inhabitants of mutation carriers and high-risk sufferers that’s in all probability the biggest inhabitants this well being system has ever needed to handle.
And I believe by investments in our software program, we’re going to have the ability to amplify the efforts of each clinician and ensure these sufferers keep on observe and keep forward of most cancers.
Basically, what we’re doing is giving everybody a hyper-personalized most cancers prevention plan. I would say that is form of the layperson’s view of this. Genetic testing is simply one of many issues that will get achieved within the CancerIQ workflow, however we’re not a genetic testing lab. In reality, we in all probability course of extra checks than among the genetic testing labs which can be on the market with out really proudly owning a lab in any respect.
We’re really within the enterprise of deciphering this data, ensuring it is attending to sufferers and is really of their arms, so that each one affected person populations can actually act on the data, versus simply getting examined by itself.