Each day 10 Israeli young adults (18-44) will hear the words: “it’s malignant” or “it’s cancer”. They will go through various treatments that will increase their chances of surviving, now more than ever before.

But it is precisely at this point, at the end of the treatments and the beginning of recovery - which to many is the triumphant peak in the cancer journey - that will become their biggest crisis to date.
In addition to their social and financial support system fading away, at this point most AYA cancer patients disconnect with caregivers in the inpatient or outpatient wards and will return to their HMOs. In the process they will lose the medical professionals who provided support during treatment and were in charge of their recovery and rehabilitation process. This leads to experiencing survivorship with no therapeutic safety net, un-personalized protocol, and under-trained medical staff in their community.

The yearlong study included various methodologies, from a review of articles and in-depth interviews with various experts in the ecosystem of cancer survivorship to physical and digital observations of multiple survivor communities and additional methodologies of self-documentation, founding a podcast and countless informal conversations within the cancer community have also been incorporated, which allowed exploration and mapping of the main pain points in the survivorship journey.

The primary insight from the study was drawn from the fact that survivors do not meet the definitions of health or illness. Survivors are a non-binary community with unique needs, which are not addressed in the existing Israeli eco-system, resulting in survivors not receiving the appropriate tools and information to manage their recovery and rehabilitation process.

The solution suggested in the project, CURA, is a hybrid survivorship clinic, physical and digital, as a part of HMOs services, that will provide a therapeutic safety net for young cancer survivors, addressing not only the necessary follow up protocol but also the long-term physical and mental consequences of treatment.

The implantation technology and reallocating resources within HMOs will allow HMOs to provide not only personal, data-driven survivorship protocols, but also affordable quality medicine and health-related services while providing AYA survivors with the information, tools and efficacy they long for in their survivorship journey.