Patients often struggle to grasp the complexities of the U.S. health system, and this confusion is often amplified after a patient receives a cancer diagnosis. The International Agency for Research on Cancer forecasts the number of new cancer cases worldwide will reach more than 29 million by 2040 compared with just over 18 million in 2018. As treatment protocols advance and people live longer, sometimes conquering one or more cancers in their lifetime, the perfect storm of chronic disease will rise and challenge our healthcare system in a variety of ways.
With this increase in the number of cancer survivors, organizations must be prepared to handle the ensuing impacts of long-term toxicities, recurrence of cancer, infertility issues, cardiovascular side-effects and psychological aftereffects.
While research shows cancer has surpassed heart disease as the number one cause of death in some high-income counties in the U.S., we have not seen the same growth and adoption of digital platforms for cancer in the ways that we’ve seen for other chronic diseases such as diabetes, musculoskeletal disease and chronic kidney disease. So why isn’t more innovation occurring for cancer care delivery?
We seek to answer this question by understanding the key challenges opposing value-based cancer care, and unbundling the most important aspects of care delivery, to identify the key trends that will influence innovation for cancer care in the next decade.