The Growing Cancer Burden & Systemic Gaps in Existing Care Models: A Spotlight on the U.S.
Why Smarter, Digital-First Models Must Lead the Way.
A Rising Tide: The Cancer Burden
Cancer is a nearly universal experience, touching every community, every health system, and so many families worldwide. As incidence rates climb, the demand for care is rapidly outpacing the system’s capacity to respond. In the U.S. alone, nearly 4 in 10 adults will face a diagnosis in their lifetime.
This rising burden is compounded by persistent gaps across the cancer care continuum, from timely diagnosis to access to specialists, follow-up care, and survivorship support. Rural communities and historically underserved groups face these challenges tenfold, often having to travel long distances to appointments or struggling to navigate insurance and out-of-pocket costs. As the U.S. healthcare system faces workforce shortages and uneven resource distribution, patients may find themselves in a complex mix of limited guidance, increased risk of delayed treatment, huge complexity during treatment, poorer outcomes, and emotional distress. Addressing these gaps in care requires us to look beyond the individual patient stories and confront the deeper, systemic, and accessibility gaps that continue to widen within the care infrastructure.
Systemic and Accessibility Gaps
Cancer care has advanced in so many ways, but access to it hasn’t kept pace. Whether it’s diagnosis, treatment, or support, too much depends on where you live and what resources are available.
In the U.S., nearly 32 million people live in counties without a single oncologist. This gap is about so much more than logistics. It comes down to the equity, outcomes, and the experience people have during the most vulnerable time of their lives.
Closing these cancer care gaps means rethinking how care is delivered. We must focus our efforts on using technology to extend reach, connect patients to healthcare teams, and support patients wherever they are — bringing smarter, more connected care wherever and whenever people need it most.
The True Cost of Inefficiency and Inequity
When cancer care is delayed or disconnected, the consequences are not just clinical — they’re financial, operational, and deeply human. A reactive system results in missed warning signs, unplanned ER and hospital visits, and mounting costs.
For example, health disparities, including those related to cancer, carried an economic burden of $451 billion to the U.S. in 2018, with racial and ethnic minority populations bearing a disproportionate share of that cost. These reflect avoidable hospitalizations, complications, and lives disrupted.
Ultimately, these inefficiencies drain resources, widen inequities, and place unmanageable strain on clinicians and patients alike.
A Smarter Model: Scaling Digital Navigation
We need a step-change — from fragmented, reactive systems to connected, proactive models that close critical gaps in care. That’s where Careology comes in.
Our platform empowers both patients and professionals. For clinicians, it delivers centralized triage, remote monitoring, and AI-powered “next best action” prompts — helping them operate at the top of their license by focusing on patients who need their expertise most. For patients, it offers 24/7 symptom support, medication adherence tools, and holistic guidance — all through an intuitive app that brings clarity, connection, and confidence.
At the heart of our approach is centralized support and navigation. By equipping trusted care teams with real-time visibility and clear escalation pathways, we ease pressure on physicians and secondary care. This allows care teams to manage low-risk, expected side effects and holistic needs, while clinicians focus on complex cases and strategic decision-making. It’s a smarter division of labor that reduces burnout and builds capacity.
Because it’s digital-first, Careology reaches into communities that traditional models often miss. Whether a patient lives in a rural area or an underserved region, they receive the same — if not greater — level of oversight and reassurance, without having to step into a clinic.
And the impact is clear:
67% of patients with serious symptoms avoided hospital admissions through Careology-powered triage.
70% of clinicians report improved decision-making with real-time patient visibility.
Changing the Story: What Comes Next
While the global cancer burden continues to grow, there’s a real opportunity to close critical gaps in care and ease the pressure on both health systems and individuals by introducing smarter, more connected solutions.
That’s why we’re embedding AI into the heart of our platform — to give clinical teams superpowers. From surfacing insights to prompting the next best action, Careology enables timely, targeted interventions that help teams work smarter, not harder.
We’re scaling fast with leading U.K. and U.S. partners, including Mayo Clinic Platform, Evolent, NHS trusts, Nuffield Health, LloydsClinical, and more. Together, we’re expanding capacity, reducing cost, and supporting smarter care — building a future where technology meets humanity and no one with cancer feels alone or unsure about what to do next.
About Paul
Paul Landau is the Founder and CEO of Careology, a digital health company focused on cancer care. His motivation for founding Careology stems from his wife's firsthand experience with cancer diagnosis and treatment, combined with his 20 years of experience in healthtech.
Landau built Careology to address the significant challenges patients face, such as managing complex schedules, understanding symptoms, and overcoming hesitation to contact healthcare teams. Under his leadership, Careology develops thoughtful software and targeted tools, clinically tested by oncologists, to create unique patient profiles. The company's mission is to make its digital innovation, clinical precision, and care navigation accessible to every person affected by cancer, ultimately improving the treatment experience and delivering value to health systems.