Span Health

When diagnosed with a life-altering condition, the available information can be overwhelming, unclear, and at times, inaccurate. Even as professionals in the field, we’ve experienced how hard it can be to understand and navigate the healthcare system. We know that treatments developed and approved under tightly-regulated clinical trial conditions may not reflect the real-world environment. Health outcomes still hinge more on where we live than on universal standards of care.  This whole experience makes patients feel isolated, uncertain, disempowered BUT most unfortunately ALONE. We believe that needs to change - and that starts with empowering patients with the information they need to advocate for themselves and manage their care

Span assists patients in managing cancer by taking care of your cancer on your own terms. We're a healthcare platform intended to offer a personalized, expert-validated evidence-based experience and disease-related information for patients. Our platform offers clinical data to generate real-world evidence necessary to drive future clinical decisions and improve outcomes, enabling patients to facilitate informed decision making and care management. We enable cancer patients to make decisions and take control of their care based on personalized information to their specific condition, including finding treatment options, tracking and managing both symptoms and medications, and further gain access to a motivational community, all in one place 

We start with a deep understanding of patients, their pain points, and journeys. We use these insights to create evidence-based experiences to help them navigate through their needs as first and foremost people – people that happen to have been diagnosed with a life-altering disease, not just patients. 

We then use a science driven approach to democratise cancer care and accelerate research. A cancer diagnosis can overwhelm patients and their families – both emotionally and with information that may be unclear and even inaccurate. Despite information overload, data from a 2016 CancerCare Patient Access and Engagement Report shows 40% do not report side effects because they don’t want to burden their doctors, and 25% are not getting the most advanced treatments.

Span Health helps patients navigate their cancer treatment journey using a personalized approach that provides the appropriate evidence-based information when patients need it most. This is achieved through using a sophisticated collection of AI and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to personalize information for each patient, factoring in their clinical histories, personal preferences and broader context. The platform’s AI-powered personalization unlocks an adaptive experience that empowers patients to stay informed, understand their treatment options, manage their quality of life, and ultimately advocate for themselves.

We're intending to be the only cancer app on the market to have created an all-in-one experience for breast and cervical cancer patients, and later roll this out for all cancer patients. 

Finally, we're harnessing our experience and expertise to create an intelligent solution that uses clinical treatment guidelines, real world data, and state-of-the-art artificial intelligence to empower patients with clarity about their best treatment options - based on their specific condition. By sharing experiences and interactions with the platform, patients have the opportunity to contribute to unique regulatory-grade, real-world datasets, which generate deeper insights to improve care, accelerate research and achieve better outcomes. The ability to continually build on these data sets will be critical as healthcare shifts toward precision medicine in an effort to win the war on cancer.  

Span Health serves cancer patients and their caregivers by providing personalized information about their treatment options, side effects, and other related information.

we have a high developmental impact primarily through our three core development areas: provision of healthcare and routine self test training to women, reducing the gender gap in health service delivery and access to reliable information for pre and post cancer diagnosis

Upon early adoption and diffusion of Span Health’s web and mobile application advisory and information services, women living in emerging markets have the ability to access relevant, understandable and evidence-based information vital for early detection, prevention as well as  transformation of living experience for those already diagnosed with cancer. We directly provide our information through web and mobile apps which allows low-income and middle-income women in rural and urban locations to access our services optimized for low resource settings.

We also realise an increase in the number of  girls and women trained in health education and a behavioral change towards cancer screening and management by leveraging the existing infrastructure of community health workers and local women saving groups (who meet almost on a daily basis) to train the target population. To ensure consistent monitoring and capturing of feedback and learnings from the beneficiaries, we have put in place both an online and offline reporting mechanism for the community health workers.

Furthermore, our online platform allows for women of all socio-economic backgrounds to circumvent any social stigma by accessing all the necessary information discreetly for high quality and effective healthcare services. 

Span health directly has an impact on cancer patients as they navigate the journey of diagnosis, treatment and recovery. We help people who have been just diagnosed with cancer, in treatment and in the process of recovery to manage the impact of cancer on their emotional health and well being by keeping track of their symptoms and how to manage them, appointments, documenting their experiences, accessing a feed with information and supportive advice and a motivational community of cancer patients all in one place.

The team lead has been at the forefront of reputable digital health technologies in Sub Saharan Africa as matibabu and breastIT. Forexample with breastIT, he has been able to engage with patients, survivors and organisations affected by cancer in a bid to craft the right solution towards breast cancer detection and empowering radiologists/health professionals to make focused assessments and accelerate treatment decisions at the point of care. It's through this journey in this specialty around that we realised, that there were few effective treatments for cancer. Cancer is the major medical problem that we do not have answers for, and I have always been driven by the need to support patients and find those answers.

I have always been stunned that patients are forced to travel halfway around the world to figure out if a premier institution has a trial for them. I witnessed the tremendous burden placed on people who have cancer to not only navigate their disease but also do the research necessary to uncover the very best treatments. When the entire digital revolution is personalized, you should not be a patient searching for information; it should be coming to you and customized based upon who you are. We founded the company because we want to not only give patients access to their data, but also bypass the bureaucracy of institutions solely being in charge of data, information, and access. We believe that direct-to-patient clinical guidance regarding treatment innovation will not only break down the silos that exist within healthcare but improve both patient and provider experiences and outcomes.

All in all, our founders' roots are in three pillars of the healthcare system - medicine, pharmaceuticals and engineering & computer science. We've seen firsthand, professionally and personally, that empowered and supported patients achieved better health outcomes. Our belief that the system can and must work better for patients, is what led us to create Span Health

Span Health is available for download to anyone with a compatible mobile device and is accessible worldwide. Therefore, the number of people served by our app is not limited to a specific number, and it's continuously growing as more people download and use the app

However, we currently serve 2250 people

MIT solve's community has for long stood out to be relevant in helping community focused projects to thrive in terms of connections to the right partners and technicality/understanfing of the specialities that we operate in

We start with a deep understanding of patients, their pain points, and journeys. We use these insights to create evidence-based experiences to help them navigate through their needs as first and foremost people – people that happen to have been diagnosed with a life-altering disease, not just patients. 

We then use a science driven approach to democratise cancer care and accelerate research. A cancer diagnosis can overwhelm patients and their families – both emotionally and with information that may be unclear and even inaccurate. Despite information overload, data from a 2016 CancerCare Patient Access and Engagement Report shows 40% do not report side effects because they don’t want to burden their doctors, and 25% are not getting the most advanced treatments.

Span Health will help patients navigate their cancer treatment journey using a personalized approach that provides the appropriate evidence-based information when patients need it most. This will be achieved using a sophisticated collection of AI and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to personalize information for each patient, factoring in their clinical histories, personal preferences and broader context. The platform’s AI-powered personalization will unlock an adaptive experience that will empower patients to stay informed, understand their treatment options, manage their quality of life, and ultimately advocate for themselves.

We intend to be the only cancer app on the market to have created an all-in-one experience for breast and cervical cancer patients, and later roll this out for all cancer patients. 

Patients will be able to do this through crucial technologies and partnerships we shall make with evidence-based institutions such as local cancer institutions, allowing patients to get their treatment path and access to the latest treatment options in the palm of their hand. We shall offer patients the ability to manage and track their symptoms and resources ranging from COVID19 information all the way to free consultations with leading breast reconstruction and cervical surgeons worldwide

In 5 years, we will measure our success by the millions of lives we will have saved and the quality of those lives saved. We see ourselves supporting patients across all cancers, as well as many other life altering chronic diseases. We will be a global company that patients credit with helping to improve their prognoses and extending or improving their lives. We will have created ann entire category recognized across the healthcare spectrum: patient empowerment. Most importantly, we will have given the power back to the patient, where it truly belongs and in doing so helped to democratice healthcare

Furthe more, we're and always will be free to patients. But we ultimately need to drive progress within life sciences. Forexample, BioPharma companies contiunes to have a clinical trial recruitment problem. The scale is massive: companies are losing lots of money, up to $8 million a day for time lost on a clinial trial. Within oncology, biomaker testing allows for personalised treatment optins that will ultimately improve health outcomes. But we need to connect the right patients with the right tests and then right treatments. The root of being able to accomplish lies in awareness. Through our hyper-engaged patient community, where patients opt in for alerts to information that could affect their to information that could affect their and so we would want to help BioPharma industry connect and match with a relevant patient population that then has a chance to benefit from our innovation

The Theory of Change is attached here

Span Health helps patients navigate their cancer treatment journey using a personalized approach that provides the appropriate evidence-based information when patients need it most. This is achieved by using a sophisticated collection of AI and natural language processing (NLP) techniques to personalize information for each patient, factoring in their clinical histories, personal preferences and broader context. The platform’s AI-powered personalization unlocks an adaptive experience that will empower patients to stay informed, understand their treatment options, manage their quality of life, and ultimately advocate for themselves.