Technology and engagement are great tools to empower cancer patients and enhance their care.
In this episode of Bite the Orange, Whitney Isola, CEO, and co-Founder of Witty Health, talks about OncoPower, a supportive cancer care community platform designed to bring high-quality care to community practitioners. She explains how it utilizes a social media format with specialized tools and a clinical trial option that personalizes options for English-speaking patients around the globe, with primary services tailored to the United States. Whitney also discusses how the platform seeks clinical trial recruiting contracts while supporting cancer patients, caregivers, advocates, oncologists, and advocacy groups. She also shares some insights about their partnership with Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company to offer medication savings features, enhancing patient affordability.
Learn how Witty Health’s OncoPower revolutionizes cancer care through a supportive community platform!
FULL EPISODE
BTO_Whitney Isola: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
BTO_Whitney Isola: this mp3 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Welcome to Bite the Orange. Through our conversations, we create a roadmap for the future of health with the most impactful leaders in the space. This is your host, Dr. Manny Fombu. Let's make the future of healthcare a reality together.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to another episode of Bite the Orange, and today we have a very special guest. If you don't know about her, she's doing incredible things in the space of oncology. And so I'm honored today to welcome Whitney Isola to the show. Welcome, Whitney.
Whitney Isola:
Thank you so much for having me.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So Whitney, I know you are a co-founder of a fantastic company called Witty Health, which we are going to learn more about, but for those that don't know about the company, know about you, let's start by knowing Whitney. Who is Whitney?
Whitney Isola:
Sure, yeah. I am a registered dietitian by training. I had sort of a traditional career in healthcare in that I started in a community hospital and then made my way into outpatient practice, and then worked my way up more operationally in a large New York City-based healthcare system. But all along the way, I just had that itch for doing something bigger and working on digital health-based projects. And so I ended up meeting my co-founders through some link, through LinkedIn, and through some consulting work, and we were all ideating in the same space about helping, using digital health and telehealth solutions as leverage to reach more people. We started with the idea of like, why is it that people get really incredible quality care, like concentrated around large academic systems in big cities as opposed to like just in their every day? And so we wanted to build something from the perspective of making it easier for like community practitioners to disseminate that same care. So yeah, and then I guess, personally, I have a young family, I have a one-and-a-half-year-old, and I love to cook and read and travel and do work around the house, all that fun stuff.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is quite incredible. So I know we talked earlier before the show. For those that don't know, we talked about the last name Isola. You mentioned it's from Argentina, correct?
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, absolutely. We went to Argentina last year to visit some family, and there's nothing better than just that relaxing life of the asado, having the asado going and having a pool. Everyone has a pool down there, it's very lovely, yeah, and lots of tango.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Tango dancing, so that's great. So I like that cultural aspect of it, and it's great to talk about these things a lot of times, for listeners to understand the person behind these companies, right? They're not robots coming from somewhere to solve the problem, these are people like you and I and everyone else that has this problem. So in this particular case, Whitney is taking that unique background and experience and bringing out the great solution in this particular culture space. But why oncology? Was it like a personal story?
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, so one of our co-founders is an oncologlist, and so having that expertise on board helped inform that decision. We also wanted to pick an area where people are very engaged with their care. And when you're starting a company, and you have finite resources to get something off the ground, having like a high-engagement community was critical for us. So that was also part of the decision-making.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is a statement that you made that cannot be ignored. I'll tell you, I spend time developing technologies in the healthcare space, but my background being in the cardiovascular space is very hard to convince people to go with, lose weight or tell someone.
Whitney Isola:
Hey, you don't have to tell me, I'm a registered dietitian.
Emmanuel Fombu:
... behavior change is quite difficult, right? But when you come in the space of oncology and rare diseases, you actually have people that are very proactive and very engaged with urgent needs, right? You don't have the time. Cancer is clearly an urgent kind of situation, correct? Yes.
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, no, certainly, the company is Witty Health, but really the product is OncoPower, and so, it's a supportive cancer care community that's geared towards both patients and providers. The reason that we homed in on supportive care is because, we just found that kind of connecting the dots for patients when they were outside of their like 15 minutes face-to-face with the practitioner was a missing piece. When they go to the doctor, and they get their treatment plan and diagnosis and stuff, there's real decisions happening, and there's other aspects of their care that are very meaningful during that face-to-face time. But all of the etc., like understanding nutrition, understanding symptom management, doing mindfulness and meditation activities, reflecting, journaling, speaking with caregivers, learning more about their treatment plans, their clinical trial options, like these are all kind of these nuances to the type of care that they're getting that are very difficult for an oncologist to be able to do all of those things in such a short amount of time. We wanted to make sure that oncologists could go ahead and do what they're best at and that these resources existed for patients outside of that, because really these are things that they can engage in from home while they're comfortable, they're on the couch, they're hanging out, you know, and like, that's real life. That's real help and treatment.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Whitney, this is actually quite interesting. I have a very close family member that was recently diagnosed with cancer, and this was last year. They went through surgery and chemo and now going through a recovery process. But I'll tell you, from the very first time when she was diagnosed, we had no idea what to do. I've never had someone I knew that had cancer, so it becomes ... It becomes like something like you and unique, right? And so what you have here is something very unique. First of all, I love the name of the product, OncoPower, right? Because at that time when you get diagnosed, first of all, the first time, it's shock, denial, right? So I think the term is actually empowering to patients. But so basically, what you have here, you're building a community where I notice you have about 5000 plus subscribers, you have over 400 plus oncologists, and you have questions and answers, and you have over 150 plus helpful videos. So it's a community where you have clinicians and patients together, right? So is it like a Facebook page, like personalized, or the highest level of this?
Whitney Isola:
It definitely uses that kind of familiar social media style format to it. It's a web-based platform and also an app, you know, right in your phone. There's a newsfeed, we see a ton of engagement on there, and then there's also more specialized tools that patients can engage with. For example, they can set up pill reminder services for themselves, you know, to try to help with treatment adherence. They can do a daily check-in tool, which is it just gamifies little self-reflection on physical and emotional status, because there's some really great research about gratitude and the role that gratitude plays when people are facing cancer. And so we just wanted to create a digital opportunity for that, for patients to engage with each and every day because the days are hard. But then when you look back at a week, and you're like, you know what? I had more good days and bad days, and this is, it really helps. And we see people post that to the feed and then cheerlead each other on so you can get as much of the clinical or not as you want when you engage with the community. But I would say the real compounding effect of the social and emotional support is what we get feedback from the community as like really making the difference.
Emmanuel Fombu:
I love that, Whitney, and I will add to that the fact that you're bringing experts, scientists with patients together, because if you go on a random page online, everyone is telling you about some kind of new diet that they tried. And you're a dietitian, I'm not making fun of diets, but I'm saying, you hear all the crazy things outside and things that you can try that comes from Egypt or Cameroon or whatever it comes from, right? It's a magic pill, right? ...
Whitney Isola:
It's so true. It's so true. I'm glad you mentioned that, because like, definitely, part of us doing all of these expert interviews and trying to communicate a lot about what supplements are helpful or an approach to incorporating sugar and carbohydrates. Sugar becomes such a demon with oncology. And so, yeah, I always say we wanted to pull the information out of the cobwebs of the Internet because that's people go to, like down these deep dark holes. And it's not, it's just for lack of knowing, for wanting to try to understand every option, right? It just comes from a place of looking for more information, yeah.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Correct, and then you have people that also prey on people like doing this. It's a very vulnerable moment, right? And so I like the fact that you have a trusted platform, which is not like a Facebook page, it's not just about community. It's also the community, but also educate you, also connect you with experts. But what I find most fascinating about this, Whitney, I was on your website last night and actually going around it, I looked at your clinical trial tool, which I thought was quite fascinating, first of all, right? So I literally went in, I clicked on clinical trials, and then I clicked the type of cancer, and then you went down, right? You went in details, like you have ovarian and ovaries, and like you give the words like the average person can relate to when we look at these things, nothing scary, right? And then you had, like clinical criteria and actually went through, and I filled it out. It asked me for my location, think your location. And then, it matched with studies around the area, and it asked me if I could request to enroll in the study. Tell me about this process. That is the best I've seen, and it's pretty thorough, as you can tell, because I went through this.
Whitney Isola:
No, I really appreciate that you did. Yeah, I mean, it's so interesting. When we first got into this space, we were really focused on supportive care. And the more I learned about clinical trials, the more I realized that this needs to be more prominently talked about, and it needs to be part of the conversation earlier in a patient's cancer journey. It's not meant to be a last resort. There's so much amazing work going on, and innovation is just getting faster. The therapies and interventions that are being studied, they're always being compared to the standard practice. There's no such thing as just as placebo in cancer care, unless, of course, there's no other option for treatment. And so, I think that like, just trying to communicate and give, you know, we started it off by doing some expert interviews and putting videos on the platform, just trying to help patients understand that this resource is available to them. And then, what we did was leverage the APIs from ClinicalTrials.gov, so we're getting new and updated information every single day, but we're filtering it in such a way that it's, A, automatically interacting with the patient's profile inputs. So they don't, if they've already filled out some of their own profile in-app, then they don't have to redo that work when they engage with the clinical trials aspect of the platform. But yeah, I mean, it's just it's incredibly overwhelming. If you go to ClinicalTrials.gov, you're going to see 60,000 studies going on, but just filtering down just even a little bit and getting maybe 200 results instead of 2000 results that are relevant to you, it's at least a starting point. And we do have an oncology nurse that every single person that says I'm interested in a study, she follows up one on one and really helps handhold the patient through and helps them understand the inclusion and exclusion criteria. And you know what? If they're very interested in the study, but maybe that doesn't turn out to be the right one, She, you know, helps with the hand-holding there. So there's a lot of really nice automations built in, but then we do have that personal touch when it comes to the point of next steps and really making sure that the patient feels supported through that.
Emmanuel Fombu:
... with these platforms. I'll tell you, Whitney, without, because I'm talking to you right now, but I think you have the best solution I've seen for clinical trial recruitment. Like, I mean, I've looked at ClinicalTrials.gov myself. I've been ... multiple studies, and I've posted on ClinicalTrials.gov, and it's very cumbersome, right? The average person, it's not the best UX design in the world, okay? This is like the old school library, and hey, there's everything here. But I loved how you asked the exclusion criteria. Another important part is not every study looks for the same endpoint, right? I could be a patient, and my interest could be, I want better quality of life, right? Someone else could be decreased tumor size, right? But I think through your support and guidance with what you've automated and your nurse, this is not only can pick a study, but pick a study that matters to them. Last point here, when I was going through your Q&A yesterday, the research in prep for our conversation today, I also noticed that you have a great Q&A piece and something you mentioned earlier about patients being concerned about being on a placebo arm often, and I think you gave a great response on there, which basically said in most oncology studies, the control arm is not placebo, it's probably standard of care, correct?
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, honestly, even having a career in healthcare, I genuinely didn't know that before last year, before we started developing this tool, and before we started focusing in on some of the education for the community. And so it just opened my eyes to the fact that, I don't know, it's always presented in media and in life as like this last resort option, but really starting to take some of those steps to understand options earlier is always a good thing.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So how does someone go about? So now we established that the product is incredibly amazing. ... I'm a listener, and I hear about this, and I say, Hey, how do I join the platform? Or how do I get involved? Do I download the app? How does this work?
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, you can go to either of the app stores and download OncoPower. It's a free app to download. There's just one spot on the app that's like a second opinion service, that's the only service that's behind a paywall. Everything else about the community is completely free, and if you are an oncologist or provider, you can also leverage your Doximity profile to verify your credentials very quickly and easily. If you don't have a Doximity profile, you'll just have to send us some documentation because, obviously, maintaining the credibility of that pool of people joining is important. Yeah, those are, it's pretty simple and easy. You could also go to OncoPower.org and sign up with one of the buttons that are right there on the website.
Emmanuel Fombu:
So perfect, so I also noticed that you have innovative care with OncoPower premium. That's like a subscription-based offer?
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, so OncoPower Premium is that one tool that I mentioned that's behind a paywall. It's either $50 for a one-time question or $30 a month as a subscription to be able to ask whatever amount of questions you want, and those questions just get asynchronously routed to a panel of practitioners. We have 12 or 15 experts that help answer questions. And so, if you ask a nutrition-based question, a registered dietitian will get back to you. If you ask a surgical question, an oncology surgeon will get back to you. If you ask a breast question, an oncologist that specializes in breast will get back to you. It's just a nice service for patients in terms of getting second opinions. There's going to the doctor and getting your nice formal 14-page second opinion from Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic or MD Anderson, and then there's like just getting more opinions, and that's what we're trying to serve.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Which is something that's very important in this place. We're giving that opportunity for people to have second opinions. So right now, is the app only available in the United States, or is it something that people around the world can get access to and download?
Whitney Isola:
Oh, good, yeah, good question. It's actually available globally. We see about 80% of our user base based here in the US. It's only in English, it's not translated into any other languages, so we do see a lot of users from like English-speaking countries. So Canada, UK, South Africa, quite a bit from the Philippines. But yeah, it is available globally. Obviously, some of what we offer in terms of like services and recommendations are very skewed to the US because our providers are here in the US, but we make that pretty transparent, and generally, people are engaging in such a way that doesn't, it doesn't limit their interaction.
Emmanuel Fombu:
I know you guys were raised in 2017, I think you launched in 2018, right? So it's been about 4 or 5 years we've been doing this, right?
Whitney Isola:
So actually, yeah, the company is, we formed in 20, early 2017. I will say though, we started developing a product with the tech developer that was, ended up turning over a relatively junky product. And so, just to be totally transparent.
Emmanuel Fombu:
It happens as part of the entrepreneurial experience.
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, it's hard. It's, because all of our like critical formation team, like we were all more healthcare-based and not IT tech-based, and we did find the right tech partner, and unfortunately, we lost probably like two plus years of time and obviously some financial resources, but we restarted from scratch essentially, although I will say it did give us some time to really flesh through ideas. Yeah, so we've been very, I would say, meaningfully in the market and like actively marketing a nice product since early 2021. So two full years now.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Oh, fantastic, so we can expect you to be in every country and every language in the meantime. But I'm sure as time progresses and as listeners have been listening, you want to help translate, please, I'm sure we can do that ... jumping into your market. So right now, as we wrap up, what's your ideal customer right now? If someone's listening from a business perspective, I know you can make revenues from the subscription model where someone pays premium, you're available 24/7. But yeah, so...
Whitney Isola:
Honestly, the subscription model is really not our core revenue stream. We are actively seeking clinical trial recruiting, success-based contracts for getting the word out to and our user base. And we're also doing very targeted marketing on behalf of companies that are either trying to target a small cohort of patients or get news out about their medical device or patient survey-type opportunities. So that's our B2B client base, so to speak. We're still so much in growth mode. So if you are a cancer patient, or a cancer caregiver, a cancer advocate, or a cancer care provider, you know, an oncologist, check us out, look us up, see if we can be a resource for your patients or, you know, if you're an advocacy group for your organization because we're actually expanding the role types in-app, those changes will actually go live, I think, this, either later this week or next week. But we really want to create more opportunity for all of these very valid organizations to reach our users and vice versa for our users to have a one-stop shop, to get a lot of different types of resources. We also actually recently teamed up with Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company and created a medication savings feature in the app. And now, the patients can get a little bit more information, for example, if they log a pill reminder and that medication is available for cheaper through the Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company, then they'll get a nice little button that pops up that says you want to explore medication savings. So see us as this facilitator of high-quality information.
Emmanuel Fombu:
It's incredible what you've done, Whitney. I think this is a one-stop shop indeed. If you're a patient, you come on the platform with your clinician, you're a caregiver, I think is a place to come to actually come learn, engage with other people, like-minded, like yourself. You can learn a lot about your particular disease. You got, participate in clinical trials, but I think also something to add we need to watch out ... CRO as well. You can also reach out to Whitney because I think you're fantastic in identifying patient clinical trials. If you're a life science company or any other company working on this kind of research, I think OncoPower is a great product and a great platform for you to come, to actually identify these patients. And you are not limited to any particular kind of cancer, you're actually across the board. You're not limited by geography. If it's an English-speaking country, you definitely open to that. You have lots of patients on the platform already somewhere, and you're also a female entrepreneur, and I think it's great to support female entrepreneurs to make sure that your business grows in that particular piece. What do you think?
Whitney Isola:
Thank you. From your lips to God's ears.
Emmanuel Fombu:
That's right, and that's a great way to wrap up this podcast. So thank you, ..., for being on the show, Whitney. So every listener.
Whitney Isola:
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, that's great.
Emmanuel Fombu:
And I'd like to check in with you again in the initial period of time to see how things are going.
Whitney Isola:
Yeah, I would love that. Absolutely.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you very much.
Whitney Isola:
All right, thank you. Have a great day. All right.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Bye Bye-bye.
Emmanuel Fombu:
Thank you for listening to Bite the Orange. If you want to change healthcare with us, please contact us at info@EmmanuelFombu.com, or you can visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com or BiteTheOrange.com. If you liked this episode and want more information about us, you can also visit us at EmmanuelFombu.com.
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Whitney Isola:
Whitney Isola is a digital health entrepreneur and Registered Dietitian. Whitney co-founded Witty Health, a company that focuses on building smart digital health tools. Witty Health's first product, OncoPower, is a platform for supportive oncology care and clinical trial mapping. Whitney has a passion for intuitive workflows, building in social support mechanisms for navigating one's healthcare experiences, and stripping away the silos in traditional healthcare.
Whitney's previous experiences include directing Food and Clinical Nutrition operations within NYC Health + Hospitals, launching ambulatory care nutrition services for multi-specialty groups, and delivering clinical nutrition care. Whitney has an MBA from Haslam School of Business (University of Tennessee) and both an MS and BS from Boston University.
When she's not driving business and strategy for OncoPower and Witty Health, Whitney can be found cooking, hiking, doing a DIY project at home, or traveling with her husband, son, and dog.
Things You’ll Learn:
OncoPower is a platform aimed at providing high-quality cancer care to community practitioners.
The platform features specialized tools such as pill reminders and daily check-ins to support patients throughout their cancer journey.
OncoPower includes a clinical trial tool that personalizes trial options based on patient profiles, helping them explore relevant studies.
The partnership with Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company provides medication savings features within the app.
OncoPower aims to bridge the gap in cancer care by offering social and emotional support, clinical trial guidance, and cost-effective options to improve the patient experience.