Since 2015 this team of cancer doctors from Sydney, Australia, has worked on creating an app with purpose to enable cancer patients and their caregivers to follow the progress, treatment and details of their disease. With passion and determination, CancerAid is now at a stage of growth where exciting possibilities are coming up in the near future.
Getting the opportunity to accelerate and expand a project that you are invested in and passionate about is the dream of every startup business. That is also what we at Get in the Ring are determined to help achieve and why we together with HightechXL hosted the Impact Summit back in July 2017. During this event, 19 startups got selected for a pilot program. One of them was CancerAid.
Sharing and caring
The idea of the CancerAid app is for the cancer patient to be able to navigate through each stage of their cancer journey, providing them with a platform to track their progress while at the same platform receiving information about the details of their disease. Additionally, the app features a function called “Champions”. It allows the patient to nominate a support network of personal or medical champions. With the “Champions,” they can share their cancer journey and thereby reduce the isolation of illness.
“For a personal champions, such as a spouse, family member, friend or work colleague, they can now keep up-to-date with how their loved ones are doing. And medical champions, such as a doctor, a nurse, […] can now monitor the progress of their patients without being face-to-face…”. – Dr Nikhil Pooviah, founder & CEO of CancerAid.
Listening to patients and taking action
The founders, Dr Nikhil Pooviah and Dr Raghav Murali-Ganesh, both cancer doctors from Sydney, Australia, have used their background as doctors to create the components of the app and are continuously updating and improving it.
“One of the reasons why we are both very passionate about it is because it allows us to help even more patients than ever before, which for us is one of the reasons we became a doctor in the first place”. – Dr Nikhil Pooviah, founder & CEO of CancerAid.
The needs of cancer patients are always changing and therefore the demands for the app will be forever changing. In effort to ensure reaching the standards and the needs of the patients, they make certain to listen to the patients at the hospital and continuously get feedback from the users of the app. Satisfying the dynamic and forever changing needs of the cancer patients means an ongoing adding of functions to the app.
Another important aspect of improving the app is to be able to integrate with Electronic Medical Records (EMR) providers. Through the Impact Summit event, CancerAid got the opportunity to work with Philips Healthcare in a pilot project. This project is still in the early phase. However, this is where they see the most value of their product – integrate CancerAid with the EMR providers.
Ready to take over the world
The app is available on the App Store and Google Play store and already has 15,000 active users across 24 countries. Moreover it is currently the number one cancer app in Australia, the US and the UK. However the goal is to get a lot more patients to use the app and for the app to become a standard care to every diagnosed patient.
In order to achieve their goals of getting a bigger patient clientele, they proceed to grow through investments. At the moment, they are closing an investment round in Australia. They have also received confirmation that an undisclosed hospital in the US will invest in the company. On the one hand, the investment from the US hospital provides a great entrance to the US market. On the other hand, it grants knowledge about how the US healthcare system works and help CancerAid grow.
Becoming the number one cancer app in three big markets has not been without challenges. With rapid growth of both the company and activities, the growth of the team has not been able to follow the speed. For a startup company this reality could have resulted in failure. However, for CancerAid, acknowledging this issue has instead resulted in the recruitment of new team members, taking the load of the founders and leaving more room for planning of the future.
More than just information
CancerAid believes that the app provides opportunities that extend to much more than just being an app of information. They believe the app can also improve the life of the patient, reduce medical cost and save life.
“Some of the big things that we aim to achieve is to show that CancerAid can actually improve health outcome. Not just cost for hospitals, but also patient survival”. – Dr Nikhil Pooviah, founder & CEO of CancerAid.
That is why the company is looking to connect with institutions, insurance companies, pharmaceuticals, etc., like-minded who can see the added value in CancerAid and who are interested in bringing CancerAid to their cohort.
If you are interested in connecting with CancerAid please contact: corrinke@gitr.co