Executive Summary
In the face of a life-threatening diagnosis, receiving consistent and meaningful support, and staying connected is a patient’s lifeline. Unfortunately, many young adults struggle with how to ask for or offer support. As a result, connections can become strained or broken, support becomes mismatched and inconsistent over time, and isolation becomes yet another health risk to overcome. See how Nablasol’s digital solution helped a non-profit bring cancer patients and their supporters together.
Challenges
People going through an arduous journey because of the life-threatening disease find it stressful to communicate about what they feel, express their needs, whether they want the company of people around them because of the simple fear of looking weak, needy, or hurting someone’s feelings for selfish reasons. However, when you look at the situation from the community, there are many who want to support such distressed people. Their lack of experience in communicating during such situations, also not knowing the current situation or status of their near and dear ones can make the situation uncertain and stressful.
We wanted to build a solution that bridges the gap between these two different sets of consumers. Therefore, we came up with a solution that helps these two different sets of target groups to solve their concerns by connecting them with cutting-edge technology.
The Solution
The idea behind this tool is to create a platform that can streamline the communication and coordination amongst young adults going through the same life struggle. This platform would enable them to connect with the peer support network and cancer patients.
The vision is to make the app available to every single young adult patient when they will be diagnosed with this disease, admitted to the hospital which will allow the support network to take its root and be there for help to the young adult by being responsive to the social & emotional needs as well as they can be physically present to show the support.
The application was built with appropriate functionalities for both patients and their supporters. Some of the features of the app included:
- Allowing patients to connect with their network of supporters and supporters to connect to the patients they’d like to help.
- A calendar that shows when the patient is available and what activities interest them.
- A messaging system for communication between patients and supports.
- Patients can set their status to update their network on how they’re feeling and if they’d like to be contacted.
- Patients can also set a wishlist to allow supporters to check what the patient needs.
Impact
- Loved ones can track activities in real-time of the patients, monitor their progress, and be there for them when they need it.
- Helping connect patients to a community they desire and wish to grow based on their convenience using an interconnected, secure, and smart environment.
- Enabling patients to connect to the community, which helps them recover or pass through the difficult phase in a cordial and happy way instead of remaining in seclusion.
