Brad Power
Co-Founder and CEO, Cancer Patient Lab
2023 Year in Review: Celebrating the Growth of Cancer Patient Lab
I am pleased to report that 2023 saw steady progress in the growth of Cancer Patient Lab – the learning community my co-founders Brian McCloskey, Rick Stanton, and I formed in March 2022 to help advanced cancer patients be co-pilots with their medical teams in making complex testing and treatment decisions.
Our 2023 Accomplishments
-
Growth in members: We now have over 100 active patients, caregivers, and medical experts participating in our community.
-
Online forum launched: We launched community.cancerpatientlab.org to provide an open place where people can learn about cancer and get their questions answered.
-
Learning sessions held: We hosted 40 comprehensive, deep-dive discussions with diverse experts and patients and publicly posted summary notes, transcripts, and video recordings to expand the knowledge base available to engaged patients and caregivers, on patient stories and topics such as immunotherapies, nutrition, and novel testing. We now have over 75 sessions which we have publicly posted.
-
Analysis of patient experiences: Brian McCloskey did an analysis of seven patients’ experiences with a new drug (Pluvicto) and shared it for others who might be considering it. See “Patients Are Having Toxicity and Effectiveness Concerns with Pluvicto”.
-
Confidential “patients and caregivers only” sessions held: We hosted a monthly meeting of patients and caregivers to review their progress and offer support.
-
Expansion of cancer types served: We expanded from our initial community of advanced prostate cancer patients to also serve brain and pancreatic cancer patients through a close collaboration with The Musella Foundation and Cancer Commons respectively.
-
Relationships with service providers strengthened: We continued to review service providers and selectively add some to our list of preferred providers with special arrangements, such as Cancer Commons, mProbe, Travera, Massive Bio, CureMatch, Genomic Expression, Anova Enterprises, BostonGene, and SHEPHERD.
-
Legal status established: We were incorporated as a non-profit, with pro bono help from prestigious law firm Ropes & Gray.
-
Website upgraded: We relaunched our website cancerpatientlab.org with improved content and navigation that better reflects our evolution of services.
-
Social media sites established: We launched a YouTube channel and a LinkedIn presence.
-
Partnership with Count Me In established: We expanded our advocacy reach through a co-marketing partnership with Count Me In, an initiative of The Broad Institute that enables cancer patients to contribute their data to research.
Our Goals for 2024
-
Continued growth in members: We hope to, at a minimum, double the number of actively engaged patients and caregivers.
-
Growth in impact for each member: We will grow our capabilities to better help patients and caregivers find better treatment options and improve their quality of life, e.g., add testing and treatment options that weren’t previously being considered.
-
Expansion of cancer types: We will onboard more brain and pancreatic cancer patients, continue growth of prostate cancer patients, and opportunistically expand to offer services to other cancer patients and caregivers.
-
Outreach: We will further upgrade our website and online discussion forum to make it easier to find our resources, and we will selectively reach out through social media to connect with people who fit our profile of engaged and educated, proactive, and patient-centered “citizen scientists”, and their amazing caregivers alike.
-
Learning sessions: We will continue our weekly webinar series, expanding our sessions to include more content on brain and pancreatic cancer. We will look into the possibility of using a chatbot to make our knowledge base easier to search.
-
Analysis of patient experiences: We will continue to gather real world patient experiences on what is working and isn’t and share it with others with similar profiles, through individual patients stories and collective data analysis when we have a cohort of similar experiences.
-
Video resources: We will develop short (2-3 minute) video summaries of our meetings to make it easier for people to access our content and build our YouTube channel.
-
Social media: We will expand our existing presence on YouTube and LinkedIn and establish a presence on other sites, such as Facebook, X, Threads, and Instagram.
-
Service providers: We will continue to host discussions to identify new service providers and deepen our relationships and collaboration with existing preferred providers.
-
Data infrastructure: We will industrialize our repository of patient data, making it more useful to other patients and for researchers.
-
Funding: We will get non-profit tax status (501(c)(3)) to make donations tax-deductible. We will explore getting grants to fund our services and growth.
We are looking forward to working with you, other advanced cancer patients and caregivers, and interested experts in 2024 to continue our remarkable progress.
ACCEPTS VIRTUA CLIENTS
[email protected]
617 818 5983
Boston Massachusetts
Leave a Reply