Software platform helps connect lung cancer patients, families

Patients with lung cancer and their families may soon have the ability to easily connect with others suffering from the disease.

The ability to connect on a platform is expected to help patients and their caregivers to share their experiences on navigating the logistics and emotions of the diagnosis.

LUNGevity Foundation, a cancer-focused not-for-profit organization, is partnering with software vendor Patient True Talk, which offers a free platform to enable patients to learn from each other.

The platform enables patients to create personal profiles and find matches based on a variety of parameters. Then, they can ask questions or answer questions from other patients, with software in the platform matching appropriate patients together and connecting them via email or phone using secure messaging.

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After a connection is made, the parties can speak offline and form a supportive relationship. This enables patients to plug into a community that may otherwise not be available.



“We hope that every lung cancer survivor, caregiver and patient advocate who is willing to help registers as a patient advocate on PatientTrueTalk.com so that those newly diagnosed have the largest support community possible from which to find matches,” says Dan Engel, CEO and founder at LUNGevity. “I wish I had a resource like Patient True Talk when I was undergoing treatment for metastatic melanoma.”

LUNGevity invests in lifesaving translational research and offering support services and education, with the goals to accelerate research to patients, empower them to be active participants in their treatment and to remove barriers that impede getting the right treatment.

The organization also offers a medically vetted website, a lung cancer navigator app, peer-to-peer mentoring, a clinical trial finder tool and survivorship conferences. More information is available here.