Family and friends who are caregivers for cancer patients are increasingly recognized as instrumental partners in the cancer journey. From managing the patients symptoms, side effects, to assisting with daily living activities, supporting the patient emotionally or with companionship, to the important aspect of assisting with transportation and co-ordination of healthcare providers and appointment note-taking. Navigating cancer is difficult. This is often a full-time job on top of the full-time job they do daily for a living. Importantly, because of the full-time nature of caregiving, it is often a job that is split amongst a few close family members, friends, and neighbors. For anyone that has ever worked on a team, this means that communication is critical to the successful execution of the caregiving task.
How big is the problem?
The tools that exist for caregivers are limited to pen and paper and clunky Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems that they get invited to by the patient. With inferior tools, multiple caregivers, a lack of structure in education for caregivers, and such a burdensome life situation such as cancer, it means there is a higher chance of caregivers getting burnt out. The AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimates there are over 3 million people in the United States providing care for someone whose primary illness is cancer, with over 30 hours a week being a caregiver for approximately 2 years. Providing efficiencies and effectiveness to this group could lead to improved cancer journeys for all stakeholders.
So what can be done today?
Improved Information Sharing for Symptom Management
A difficult thing for caregivers to know is how the patient is truly feeling. One person’s “good” may be different than the other, even if you know them well. Having a quantifiable way to track the qualitative aspect of symptoms can be helpful for caregivers in understanding how the patient is truly feeling. This means the caregiver can then provide more targeted support, whether that be different meals to make, more advocacy at the appointment for a certain symptom to be addressed by the oncologist, or simply providing some small amount of joyful experience amidst a more depressive stage of the journey. Sharing symptoms and leading medical guidance on how to manage the symptoms can be engaging for the patient and caregivers helping everyone navigating cancer provide a safe canopy for the patient.
Easy info sharing for less burdensome follow-up with other supporters
On the ReneCare platform, a patient can invite a caregiver to their cancer journey in addition to other supporters that have more restricted views on what they can see. However, importantly, they can see just enough to know how that person is fairing on the journey, and provide more targeted support. Many people often want to help more but they don’t know how. With ReneCare, supporters can submit positivity moments, see high level if the person is progressing well, and so on. This prevents the emotional drain that occurs when patients are forced to constantly repeat themselves to different people in their life about how things are progressing on the journey, while providing strong insights for the supporter to approach at the right times.
Logging of questions for appointments with AI answers derived from appointment recordings
You may notice a lot of physicians using co-pilots and AI scribes in the appointment to capture all the information and organize it for billing purposes. This benefits the physician by saving them time on the back end when it comes to entering in all the required information for billing requirements. With the ReneCare Answer Assist, caregivers can go into a future appointment, log their questions, and after the appointment, run the AI with a simple press of the button and their questions will be answered by the appointment notes if the topic was covered in the appointment. There's no burden to the clinical team and all the benefit to the patient team.
Positivity Sharing to Remember the Fun Times
The journey is long and full of trying moments for the patient, the caregiver, and everyone involved. With a platform like ReneCare, it offers an outlet to offload all the symptoms and knowledge about the journey into one spot, so everyone can focus on life again. To help with that, ReneCare has a positivity bucket that supercharges patient engagement by encouraging supporters of the patient to provide video, image, text stories about memories they have. When ReneCare notices the patient can use an uplifting, message, it serves them one of the moments from the positivity bucket.
It's important for everyone navigating cancer to focus on the patient, the clinical team's directions, and supporting the patient through the journey. But it can't be done at the expense of the caregiver's wellbeing. Tools like ReneCare can help lessen the burden that caregivers face in 2025.
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