The Irish-founded oncology software company, ONCOassist, today announces a new agreement with The National Comprehensive Cancer Network® (NCCN®). The collaboration will focus on integrating NCCN Content to create a digital tool that will help oncology professionals around the world stay up to date with relevant clinical content about cancer care. ONCOassist is a CE-approved decision support app for oncology professionals around the world. It is currently the only oncology app on the market with regulatory approval for use in a hospital setting.

ONCOassist hosts tools and content specific to oncology and is used by more than 73,000 professionals across 150+ countries. It is estimated that 40 percent of oncology healthcare professionals (HCPs) globally use ONCOassist. ONCOassist is revolutionizing the delivery of global cancer care and aiding in reaching the goal of improving the quality of patient care globally. 

NCCN is a not-for-profit alliance of 32 leading cancer centres devoted to patient care, research, and education. NCCN is dedicated to improving and facilitating quality, effective, equitable, and accessible cancer care so all patients can live better lives. 

By joining forces, NCCN enables ONCOassist to make key decision support information available to their users around the world, advancing their mission of helping HCPs make more-informed oncology decisions. The new agreement will allow oncology clinicians to access relevant, up-to-date tools and content at their fingertips on the ONCOassist smartphone app. ONCOassist and NCCN are working together to bring their content to oncology clinicians around the world, irrespective of their resources. Through the leadership and expertise of clinical professionals at NCCN Member Institutions, NCCN develops resources that present valuable information to the numerous stakeholders in the healthcare delivery system. 

According to Cancer Research UK, there are around 375,000 new cancer cases in the UK every year which is around 1,000 every day. Globally, 18,094,716 million cases of cancer were diagnosed in 2020 alone according to the World Cancer Research International Fund. With that in mind, DATA-CAN found that there was a significant drop in urgent referrals for early cancer diagnosis along with a noticeable reduction in chemotherapy attendance during the COVID-19 pandemic. This indicates that COVID-19 may have impacted and prevented patients from being diagnosed early on. ONCOassist aims to make life easier for both oncology professionals as well as patients themselves. 

When speaking about the agreement, Co-founder and CEO of ONCOassist, Eoin O’Carroll said, “We are thrilled to announce this opportunity to collaborate with the NCCN. This project has been in the pipeline for some time and we are very much looking forward to working together. This is an exciting step forward for ONCOassist for our work in cancer care and goal to facilitate healthcare professionals by gaining access to the right information and delivering better care to patients.”

When speaking about the collaboration, Robert W. Carlson, MD, CEO of NCCN, said, ”Clinicians need to have frequently-updated, evidence-based, expert consensus information available at their fingertips. This collaboration will help make sure the gold-standard recommendations from NCCN’s expert panels are easily accessible to the people who need them. Ultimately, this means more people with cancer will receive the kind of treatment that is most likely to lead to better outcomes.”