Chris Ryan began a journey shortly after the Christmas season in 2005 that would forever change his life. What seemed like a call home to his father began a string of events that lead to what would become the www.Cancer.im Social Network.
Chris Ryan’s father was dying of liver cancer when he realized that something needed to be done in order to provide hope for people battling cancer. When he began researching the best treatment for his dying father, he felt overwhelmed by all the information out there. While interacting with patients who were fighting cancer, the thought crossed Ryan’s mind that there needed to be some way to connect cancer patients in order for them to be able to share their journeys. He felt that a social networking site would be needed to provide patients with the hope and information crucial to fighting the cancer battle.
In November 2007, in memory of his his father Chris began work on the www.Cancer.im social network. This social network has four main goals: to allow patients to organize their support network, to provide tools to organize patient records, to organize facts and information on cancer, and to encourage individual treatment strategies.
Ryan felt that if they had a way to organize their supporters, cancer patients would begin to feel like they were more in control of their lives. This would allow patients to keep their friends and family informed of their treatment process including appointments, results, etc. This would also allow them ways to organize their supporters in order to most meet their needs.
According to Chris a big hurdle in the cancer fight is all the paperwork involved. Cancer patients are overwhelmed with a constant barrage of medical, financial as well as legal issues along the way. Chris Ryan wanted to provide a tool to allow patients to organize all of this information in one, easy to maneuver place.
Due to all the information regarding cancer available on the internet, Chris Ryan felt there was a need to weed through what is out there and keep what was most informative and get rid of all of the rest. Through the Cancer.im network, he is able to provide patients with access to the most pertinent, vetted information.
Lastly, Chris found that patients’ quality of life greatly affect their ability to fight cancer. Because of this realization, he developed tools for patients to create their own exercise, diet and treatment plan based on a patients’ educated beliefs, values and resources.
All of the information was plugged together in one place, www.Cancer.im, with different levels of access into each patient’s information.
Cancer.im’s mission statement is to “empower every cancer patient, regardless of there ability to pay with the information and resources they need to create a customized cancer strategy.”
To learn more on how you can be part of this movement please feel free to contact Chris Ryan directly at chris@cancer.im