For the past 25 years, OncoLink has served as a beacon for patients battling cancer, their caregivers, and its survivors, as well as for the clinicians who provide their care. It is one of the most trusted sources of cancer information on the web. Last year alone, the website had 4.5 million visits, and only half from the U.S. “Our top users are the United Kingdom, Spain, India, Canada, Mexico, and Australia,” says Carolyn Vachani, OncoLink’s managing editor. OncoLink’s Survivorship Care Plan, which is given to patients within the first year after completing treatment, has been printed out more than 100,000 times in more than 133 countries.
“Twenty-five years is an incredible milestone,” says James Metz, chair of Radiation Oncology. “The support from Penn Medicine and the amazing grassroots team that has made this so successful over the years is unprecedented.”
While the site started out as a source primarily for patients and caregivers, as health care has become more patient-centered, “more than half our users are nurses looking for reliable material to educate patients,” Vachani says. This includes handouts on medications and managing different side effects, much of it information that not even the National Cancer Institute offers. All information on the site is written by clinicians who have worked with cancer patients or by survivors, and is regularly updated to keep up with new developments in cancer treatment, care, and survivorship.
To keep things “simple,” the OncoLink team has revised the bulk of its patient content over the past two years, using plain-language principles. “A person may be a Ph.D. researcher in biology but that doesn’t mean he would understand a cancer diagnosis and treatment,” Vachani says. The team was trained and certified in plain-language communication to develop materials that better meet literacy standards.
Read more at Penn Medicine News.
