OncoLink and LIVESTRONG Care Plan -- Online Cancer Resources

James Metz, MD, the clinical director of radiation oncology at Penn Medicine, is also the editor-in-chief of OncoLink. Dr. Metz discusses OncoLink and the LIVESTRONG Care Plan and how they are valuable online resources for cancer patients, health care providers, etc.

Visit the OncoLink website:
http://www.oncolink.org/

Learn more about the LIVESTRONG Care Plan:
http://www.livestrongcareplan.org/

TRANSCRIPT:
"At Penn Medicine, we have a very valuable resource on the internet and that's called OncoLink. It's really a tremendous resource that's been built up over the years."

"We actually have over 75,000 documents online that we manage. This information is at every level; from the patient who really doesn't know medical terminology very well, all the way through the expert physician."

"There's about 20% of our users are international. The information's also in Spanish for our Spanish speaking patients."

"It goes through from the diagnosis and screening through treatment, all the way through follow-up care and survivorship. It really has all the information, all the gamut of information that you need to help you through your disease process. And it really is a wonderful resource of Penn Medicine to help you through the cancer experience."

"Well, we've developed a plan, called the LIVESTRONG Care plan and our partnership with the Lance Armstrong Foundation that allows patients or health care providers to input basic demographic information about themselves; their age, their diagnosis, what treatments they've received and this automatically spits out a 7 to 8 page care plan for the rest of their life that deals with things like fertility issues, heart issues, lung issues, follow-up issues or general health issues."

"So they have a plan to take their primary care physician or they have a map, a road map, for the rest of their life."

• Category

  Science & Technology

[Patricia Wakefield]

This is a great idea. Could help thousands of people with cancer survivorship issues.