New technology takes aim at Hispanic cancer burden, the leading cause of death of an increasingly heterogeneous population
| LOS ANGELES, Oct. 16, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- chemoWave, a free mobile app that empowers cancer patients to take greater control of their health during treatment, today launches chemoWave en Español, a new Spanish language app for iPhone and Android phones.
“In the face of ongoing minority cancer disparities, we’re excited to expand chemoWave to those whose primary language is Spanish,” said Matt Lashey, co-founder & CEO of chemoWave’s parent company, Treatment Technologies & Insights, Inc. (TTI). “As a career data analyst turned caregiver, I learned first-hand during my partner’s successful fight against cancer that patients and caregivers don’t have to feel powerless or suffer in silence. Much can be done to avoid, if not significantly reduce, treatment side-effects and symptoms. That’s why I created chemoWave, and now chemoWave en Español, to equip patients and caregivers with a tool that can help them take control over the ups and downs they experience and improve their overall quality of life while undergoing treatment.” In building on the original app’s capability to track symptoms, activities, medications and more, and to discover unique patterns and insights for each individual patient, the chemoWave team invited feedback from various Hispanic cancer thought leaders to ensure the new app went beyond simple translation and addressed cultural nuances among Hispanic patients and caregivers. “We learned a lot as a result of focus group discussions with advocates, doctors, nurses, caregivers and ‘promotoras,’” said Katherine Urbon, TTI’s Chief Strategy Officer, and Head of Partnerships. “In better understanding the huge need to both empower Latinos impacted by cancer and to generate more comprehensive data for researchers, we are incredibly invigorated to help. We are especially grateful for the feedback from the Nueva Vida organization, as well as Ysabel Duron, founder of Latinas Contra Cancer who most recently founded the Latino Cancer Institute.” Armando Monroy, TTI’s Lead Engineer who originally hails from Mexico, added: “There are so many barriers to communication in cancer treatment, which is even more dramatic if English is not the primary language. In developing chemoWave en Español, we now understand the limited resources available to a very diverse and growing population in the United States. Almost all of the cancer information available to patients today is standardized for a mostly white population, so we’re excited to have created a personalized tool that can quantify the relationships of an individual’s actions and experiences to identify what makes them feel better or worse.” The initial iOS version of chemoWave was launched just over one year ago, a few weeks after a 2017 report on a clinical trial announced at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), showing increased survival rates among metastatic cancer patients who tracked and shared their treatment experiences digitally with care providers. chemoWave and chemoWave en Español can be utilized for iPhone and Android, as well as the Apple Watch or other wearables. chemoWave’s technology offers a holistic, real-time record & analysis of patient experiences, designed to: engage patients in managing treatment side effects, provide doctors with better information for more confident decision-making, and ultimately improve protocols that lead to better outcomes in the future. In early 2018, TTI launched a unique collaboration with ASCO’s cancer.net, America’s leading online destination for cancer patients, to provide targeted in-app symptom insights at the moment of patients experiencing specific symptom distress. chemoWave is the initial and premier app of Treatment Technologies & Insights (TTI), a digital health company that creates patient-centered mobile apps, along with building physician portals and research databases. Tapping into the power of patient reported outcomes (PROs), TTI’s technology is focused on capturing and operationalizing PROs to impact healthcare. Starting first in oncology, TTI plans to deploy its technology across multiple chronic disease states that could benefit from increased patient involvement and monitoring. Read more about the personal story that led to the creation of chemoWave in the American Journal of Managed Care. Download the FREE app for Android at: http://bit.ly/gp_chemoWave
SOURCE chemoWave |
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