Helping Nobel Prize Medicines Work Best
Treatments for cancer are better than ever. Why are so many patients still struggling?
The Memora Health team excitedly congratulates Drs. James Allison and Tasuku Honjo on receiving the 2018 Nobel Prize in Medicine for their seminal work discovering the role of negative immune regulation for cancer therapy.
Not only has the work of Drs. Allison and Honjo led to the inspiration, development, and approval of multiple lifesaving therapeutics, from immune checkpoint blockers to CAR-T therapies, but it also sparked a paradigm shift in how physicians and scientists approach the treatment and management of both liquid and solid tumors.
While the science of cancer treatment continues to progress at breakneck speed, a largely unmet need in cancer care is a scalable solution to help patients navigate the complexity of cancer treatment, including scheduling and tracking appointments, dealing with side effects, getting timely answers to common questions about conditions and chemotherapy, and adhering to complicated treatment regimens. While empathetic physicians can certainly close the gap by addressing patient concerns during clinic visits, their time is limited outside of those doors. Many patients unfortunately have no choice but to deal with the intricacies of cancer treatment alone. This is particularly evident when we consider top-tier cancer care versus the alternative. The top cancer centers in the U.S. have the reputation and budget to hire additional clinical support staff–care navigators, health coaches, and peer mentors–to guide patients through the difficult journey of cancer treatment, but for most patients, this standard of care simply isn’t an option. It is no wonder that across oral chemotherapy drugs, an otherwise convenient way for patients to receive cancer treatment relative to a drug infusion in the hospital, adherence ranges at a lowly 24.8%. At the root of this problem are high levels of misunderstanding, perceived and actualized side effects from new medications, and even assumptions among some that their prescribed medications would have little effect on their illness. An accessible, affordable, patient-friendly solution is desperately needed to bring the highest standards of cancer care — the same standards that define ‘top’ cancer centers — to all.
At Memora, our team of doctors and engineers built Felix, a virtual assistant for clinicians that sends health coaching, mentoring, scheduling, and treatment instructions and information to patients via text message. Patients can text in questions about their condition, treatment plan, medication regimen, or scheduled appointments and receive an instant automated response, giving patients the comfort of 24/7 care. For any question beyond the scope of Felix, the patient’s care team receives an email and can use a web interface to type a text-message response back to the patient. Felix offers friendship — a guaranteed partner that will accompany patients throughout their entire journey with cancer — wishing them well in the morning, reminding them of their progress, and keeping their friends and family updated when they might need an extra hand.
Studies have repeatedly shown that text messaging can increase adherence to treatment and care management by nearly 40%, but our goal is much larger — to improve the entire patient experience.
When Dr. Allison heard the news from his son at 5:30am yesterday morning, he commented:
“It still hasn’t completely dawned on me. I was a basic scientist. To have my work really impact people is one of the best things I could think about. It’s everybody’s dream.”
At Memora, we share the same dream as Jim, and hope to play our part in helping bring his science and treatments to patients around the world.
Memora Health is building the operating system for care delivery that implements intelligent, streamlined workflows and revolutionizes the patient experience outside the care setting. We offer a smart end-to-end platform that unifies fragmented health care data to enable providers, payors, and life science companies to automate care delivery operations — from patient communication to documentation to reimbursement. We uniquely use artificial intelligence to digitize existing care delivery workflows, giving clinicians infrastructure that learns from every encounter they have. Memora supports a full suite of virtual care systems from automated patient intake and scheduling to remote monitoring and care pathways to billing and documentation. Memora is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, SV Angel, Kevin Durant, Martin Ventures, and several healthcare strategic groups.
