littlesnailcs
pre-diagnosis: we got lots of patient ask "is this cancer" question. Because the symptoms sometimes are not super obvious, an oncology nurses with many years of experience is able to ask the right questions, and give you much accurate answer. The fact is that early diagnosis matters so much on the outcome.
after diagnosis: again many questions can only be answered by oncology professionals. Even the dietitian, which we also offered on our platform, they are required to have oncology training, understand chemo drugs, then be able to offer professional coaches.
We are thinking to collaborate with those primary care telemedicine/insurance platforms, so they can refer their patients to the specialties ones, like us
1. population is big enough for us to perfect our product, 1 in 8 women in the US will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their life time, Men will be diagnosed as well. 2. the complexity of breast cancer is less comparing to other types, and there are more very good oncologists in this area as well. Since we are small, we want to maximize the quality of the service with limited resources.
We will expand to other cancer types later on. Many cancer centers actually have a separate breast cancer department, examples in new york city: mount sinai dubin breast center
In regarding your second question, I assume you want to ask the membership service. For telemedicine service, provider see patients and answer any question (even is simple), this is reimbursable from the insurance. For membership, our nurse practitioners will be the first layer on the other side to answer any question via the chat, many of them have 20-30 years of experience, and NP are actually eligible to prescribe medicine. Patient can book a full session with oncologist when need.
In some way, our idea is kind of aligned. We want to make the barrier of access good cancer care very low so that everybody can benefit from it. Instead of working so hard to search for referrals in order to see the good doctors.
One take away from 3 months in: digital health sits on the cross of healthcare/bio and technology. YC has really diversified companies, and we benefit a lot from the perspectives in different sectors.
Healthcare is complicated, I think you would agree with me. It is a highly regulated industry, complicated ecosystem: physician, payers, patients, hospitals etc. To disrupt this industry, one company is not enough, so I actually think popularity of digital health startups is a good thing in general to really push the consumer adoption and the regulation to catch up.
In the cancer space, the quality of the services are super important - save lives. One good example is Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) - where Lily used to work at. MSK treats cancer only and does it super well. Patients from all over the world will come to treat there. We are the first mover and we want to be the "MSK" in digital space.
We are partnering with other parties in the ecosystem, if you are interested, here are more details: https://www.forbes.com/sites/berenicemagistretti/2020/08/05/...
We think our direct to consumer channel really helped the patients, as we already served many patients who would not be able to access the care easily. For example, they are in rural areas, or they live in places that do not have good cancer centers, or they are too busy to go to the hospitals, etc. We see the huge needs there. That is also the original drive why we started this company.
Regarding the product, we are still iterating the product for sure. Cancer is different from flu. It usually involves survey, chemo, radiation and others. It is quite complicated and the treatment could last 6 months to 1 year. Patients have questions all the time during the long period, that is why we think our chat solution could really add value. Thanks for suggestions on payers side collaboration.