The Elly App for Cancer Patients

Credit: ellyhealth.com

The Elly app, released in January 2020, is designed to function as the “world’s first empathetic audio companion for people impacted by cancer.” The aim of Elly is to provide a comforting and consistent resource for patients experiencing heightened anxiety and loneliness.

Every day, Elly provides you with a 90-second daily summary of audio content. The summary includes a personalized audio message to ensure the user feels motivated for the day ahead. The summary includes a topic relevant to the user’s diagnosis and cancer stage and a message of inspiration. Elly’s session options include motivation, mindfulness, exercise, sleep, nutrition, coping and self-care.

Elly has topics for every stage of the cancer journey. Whether the user has been recently diagnosed with cancer, maybe going through treatments like surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy, or is in remission, the Elly app will take into account the patient’s preferences and limitations and give appropriate information and suggestions accordingly. As Elly gets to know the user better, the content becomes more personal.

A Phase 1 clinical study in oncology with the app showed that the app improved patients’ overall quality of life by 10%.  Elly also saved $9K per patient per year in predictive cost savings.

Elly was created by Nikhil Pooviah, M.D., and Simon Holland. Pooviah is a radiation oncology physician who previously co-founded the world’s #1 cancer app, CancerAid.  Holland previously co-founded HotDoc, a patient engagement platform used by almost 5 million patients.