OnCo
ideasIdea

A patient-held cancer record that travels across providers and borders

Patients would carry their full cancer history, scans and test results in a standard digital bundle they control and can hand to any doctor anywhere.

Patients see multiple providers across systems and countries; records do not follow them. A FHIR-based, patient-held record (International Patient Summary plus mCODE bundle, images via DICOMweb links) stored in a patient-controlled vault would make the patient the integration point. Apple Health records, the EU patient summary, and Blue Button show pieces exist; oncology-specific completeness (staging, regimens, genomics, imaging) is missing.

Hypothesis
Patients with a complete portable record will experience fewer repeated tests and faster second opinions, and consented export from these vaults will become a significant source of research data.
Rationale
Where patients hold the record, fragmentation between providers stops being a technical problem; the patient becomes the consent and integration authority.
What would test it
Provide the record to 500 patients with metastatic disease seen across two or more systems; measure repeat imaging, time to second opinion, and patient-reported burden versus matched controls.
Maturity
early clinical
Who has to act
patients
Cost to try
Medium ($1M to $50M)
Years to first evidence
3
Bottlenecks it attacks
  • Data silos · Records, scans, genomes and outcomes sit in separate systems that cannot talk. Every patient's experience is lost to the next.
  • Fragmented care and guideline gaps · Patients fall between specialists, wait for referrals and often do not get the treatment guidelines say they should.

Connected

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Pages like this

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fronts

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AI & Computation

companies

1
Patient Data Vault (data-vault.health)

ideas

1
A digital second-opinion network answering community oncologists within 72 hours

bottlenecks

2
Data silosFragmented care and guideline gaps