Cancer is a major disruption in a patient’s life, which can result in feelings of anxiety, sadness, fear, anger, and isolation. This is especially true for young adults with cancer, exacerbating an already stressful and often difficult time in their lives. We’ve addressed this problem with iaya, a smartphone app, designed to help young adults with cancer build a sense of community and develop coping skills to address their emotional needs.
Key features of the app include:
Access to novel coping strategies that have worked for other young adults
Community questions to enable users to hear from other young adults coping with cancer about issues important to this community
Private messaging between users
Push notification reminders about practicing coping strategies
Community feeds to see what coping mechanisms others are using and to hear from other users about their experiences with cancer
Private feed to keep track of strategies that work for individual users
Geolocation feature to connect with other young adult patients while undergoing treatment
Ongoing patient feedback and improvement