When is Cancer Platform going to be available?

Our ambition is big and will take time. We are working hard for our pilot version to be released in 2024. We’ll be continuing to use our website to provide updates on the status of our product journey.

Thanks to a transformation gift from our Founder David Rees, Cancer Platform has been able to enter its product development phase. We have appointed UsTwo as our lead build agency and have recruited a Chief Data Officer (CDO) and Chief Technology Officer (CTO). UsTwo will lead the platform creation and will be managed by our CDO and CTO.

Our CDO and will play an integral role in the creation of Cancer Platform’s assurance process, product roadmap and launch. A wider team of engineers and product experts will be appointed in the next 12 months to maintain the development of the platform, and to manage regulator relationships in each of our core territories. 

Cancer Platform will start its own journey focused solely on a UK market. Through a phased approach, this will be followed by further product iterations, taking it from our pilot to full product as quickly as possible, building up the platforms content and partners across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand to deliver on our mission as a truly global resource.

The website will provide updates on the products status, what we are testing, and when to expect the next iteration. We lean into sharing our innovation journey, encouraging others to join us if they see something they can help with. 

Does Cancer Platform plan to be a website and an app?

Yes Cancer Platform is expected to be available as a website and an app. The initial focus will be on a website but an app is expected to be available at some stage in our development.

Will Cancer Platform publish its own information?

This is currently being explored as part of our products build. The primary aim of Cancer Platform is to get people to trusted and specific cancer information more quickly. We do not expect to be a publisher of cancer information, research or guidance.

How will you ensure the services or information you’re sign posting people to can be trusted?

Everything available through the platform will go through a specially designed assurance process that is expected to have multiple layers. This assurance process is pivotal to the success of our platform. It underpins our ability to develop a deep relationship of trust with our users. that trust leads to users providing more information, more data, which leads to us providing better answers, greater specificity. 

The assurance process is our commitment to our users, to our partners. It defines how something gets on to our platform, how it stays there, how it is presented, what guidance is given to our users about it and what journey we guide users through when navigating to that information source or service. It’s not a policy, it’s a real-time application of our values, of our attention to patient safety, focussed entirely on maintaining the trusted relationship with our users. 

The assurance process is aims to empower our users to navigate their cancer journey in a way that fits with their values, and always in line with patient safety processes. 

The global assurance process is under development, informed by people with lived experience of cancer at every stage of the journey, and by experts in cancer from across our Founding Partner network. The full process will be published and introduced to our users as part of our platform launch and will be updated, whenever changes to the process have been made. 100% transparency at all times. 

How is the organisation different to other cancer charities?

We aren’t here to compete, we are here to solve a fundamental problem with the way cancer care is delivered globally. Collaboration is at the core of how we work bringing cancer charities together via one platform, to make it easier for people looking for information, services or products. We are agnostic towards the governance model of any organisation delivering trusted services to people living with cancer. That means you’ll see global corporations next to small charities, next to public bodies. It’s about the quality of the information, service and product and getting all trusted resources in one place. It’s not something any other charity, corporate or tech platform has achieved.

Will the platform be global?

When finalised, the platform we will be available to global users and the content will be appropriate to wherever you are in the world. Our testing and development is happening here in the UK so a lot of the localised content and services will be stronger for those based in the here until we expand to other parts of the world. Partners around the world are helping to ensure relevant content is on the platform for your location, but much of the information you’ll find will be relevant no matter where you are. Our aim is to keep scaling up the quality and amount of information, services and products until everyone in the world has access to what they need. Whilst we aim to keep our team lean, we have plans to recruit future team members around the world to lead on relationships with our partners and content providers in each continent.

How is Cancer Awareness Trust Funded?

Like most charities we raise our funds through a mix of activities. We are generously supported by one of our Founders, Prof. Sir Chris Evans but both of our Founders led the fundraising efforts in the early stages, bringing a number of private donations from individuals to support our start-up costs. We focus most of our efforts on raising funds from philanthropists, businesses and institutions who are able to join us as a Founding Patron or Partner and contributing to the costs of making the platform happen. This can be either with a cash donation, or by alleviating a real cost by providing space, people or tools. We are also submitting proposals for much larger amounts to major philanthropists and large trusts and foundations to raise funds that will cover aspects such as our tech development, global branding and comms strategy and to ensure we recruit individuals who can lead on the content development. Our aim is to remain lean to focus 100% of our energy on delivering the platform.

From time to time, we’ll collaborate with for-profit companies who are both funding our development and featuring their products and/or services on the platform. However, our commitment is to never allow any organisation, company or individual to influence the signposting of information, services or products to you. Wherever you see a corporate partner supporting the platform, you’ll see a transparency statement from us about that relationship, what they are providing and receive in return.

Once Cancer Platform is ‘finished’, what’s next?

We exist to deliver the movement which will create and manage Cancer Platform. Cancer Awareness Trust will remain as the fundraising and governance function of the platform, ensuring we continue to secure the funds for its growth and reach into all cancers and all communities. That’s a huge task and we expect to keep dedicating new resources every year towards the challenge of fresh, trusted content.

The Trust ensures our focus remains on delivering what the users need, fostering trust with our users and partners, putting the cancer before any revenue opportunities. Once the platform has launched and is successfully transforming the cancer care of millions of people, we’ll start to develop further plans to invest in the leading innovations on our platform, supporting those who can help to respond to the gaps and needs of our users.

We are committed to transparency and developing trust with our users, supporters and partners and will provide updates on our journey through the website. This movement is very much an innovation journey, that means we may pivot as we learn what works, where we can make the most impact and what is possible with the resources we have.

We have long-term ambitions to use the extensive data this platform will give us to help identify the gaps in supporting people with cancer, and direct our support and that of funders, experts and policy makers to those needs.

What is your approach to equality and diversity on the platform and at Cancer Awareness Trust?

Firstly, we are a start up and we represent a global movement. That gives us many challenges, but huge opportunities too. Our approach to building the team, board and advisory groups is to bring the best of diverse voices, expertise and people together - to represent the breadth of what and who the movement represents. Our approach to our development stages is to lean into the challenges of building a tech platform that we know will come with barriers, listening to and learning from experts in cancers that adversely affect specific communities but also doing the same with tech experts who have already overcome some of the many barriers tech can present. We won’t always get it right, but we will always listen, learn and evolve. As a movement, the partners, content and relationships must reflect the widest diversity possible. Cancer doesn’t discriminate in who it affects.Cancer Platform is for everyone, so if there’s something interesting you think we should explore that can improve our approach to equality, diversity and inclusion, get in touch.

How can I contact you to discuss something or get involved?

You can either reach out via Contact Us or you can email us directly at contact@cancerawarenesstrust.org. You can use the same form for complaints, or to get involved, or to simply send us a message showing your support.