Redefining virtual care: co-designing compassion into cancer care delivered at home

Director, Design & Innovation, Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network

The struggles that cancer patients experience mostly occur outside of the hospital, where there are typically limited opportunities for them to receive support from their care team. Mike’s team at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre is responsible for the launch and scale of a remote care program to support cancer patients at home between scheduled clinic visits. To be successful in improving patient-centred outcomes, “digital-compassion” must be central to this service. His project seeks to understand digital-compassion and how to operationalize it through an iterative co-design process with patients and their healthcare teams.