All information on cancer grouped in a single application with a complete search engine for clinical trials, summaries and podcasts of professional congresses, information on drugs, protocols or the latest scientific developments, Oncoclic is an application resolutely useful for doctors as well as for their patients. It was imagined by Siavoche Agier Ayati and Jean-David Fumet, two doctors specializing in oncology and clinical research at the Georges-François Leclerc center in Dijon. This application and has already been downloaded more than 7,000 times. Interview with Jean-David Fumet.
– Christophe Tourne
Can you introduce us to Oncoclic?
Oncoclic is the application around cancer with two interfaces. A general public interface, which in fact provides all the information that the general public needs on cancer, whether screening or the latest news. And then there is a part which is intended for health professionals and whose objective is to give them all the digital tools necessary for the good practice of oncology and in particular in terms of clinical research.
You are also launching Actis Oncology today. What is that ?
Actis Oncology is a tool that is available on Oncoclic and is nothing more than a search engine for clinical trials in oncology. Today, you have to understand that we have lots of applications on our phone, to order food or a train ticket for example, but to find a clinical trial adapted to your patient, it’s an obstacle course. It’s extremely time-consuming and it discourages a lot of doctors. And this explains why today, we have less than 5% of cancer patients who are included in a clinical trial. The figure is very low, with major inequality throughout the territory, and so we said to ourselves that we were going to take matters into our own hands and we were going to provide the digital tools to make it easy to find a clinical trial adapted to your situation. patient.
You are both, with your partner, doctors specializing in oncology and clinical research at the Georges-François Leclerc Center in Dijon. Did this experience help you to develop this application?
Exactly. We said to ourselves, we are going to stop waiting for professionals or start-ups to bring us the solution. We are on the ground, we are aware of the difficulties. Initially, it was really the two of us, Doctor Ayati and me, it started with a story of collaboration and friendship at work. Our Excel spreadsheet that we sent each other turned into an application when we started coding it. Then the other doctors began to see an interest in it and it developed locally in the region, then nationally since today, this application is used throughout the territory.
When we talk about clinical trials, is it to test new protocols?
Exactly. Today, modern medicine is based on evidence-based medicine. We need to prove the effectiveness of a treatment before giving it to a patient. And so, it goes through clinical research and clinical trials. Of course, it is the patient who is at the heart of all this, because he benefits from access to rapid innovation. Doctors save time, hospitals that hold its clinical trials, will also have accelerated recruitment. And then the health manufacturers who set up a large part of the clinical trials will respect their objectives and have faster results. Ultimately, it will benefit the whole community with results and treatments that are coming.
To develop this application, did you create a company?
It’s Medico Tech. Our goal is that for the user of the application, it remains completely free. Our business model is therefore based on multi-party collaboration with both healthcare establishments and pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Dijon, a leading city in the fight against cancer?
For Jean-David Fumet, Pink October is very useful because this annual event helps mobilize everyone around breast cancer and cancer in general. This is also what Oncoclic wants to do with its interface for the general public, ie to remind patients that today screening makes it possible to make earlier diagnoses. “Thanks to screening, we can find cancers that are at a curable stage. And so this promotion thanks to Pink October is very important. In terms of the fight against cancer, Dijon is at the forefront, mainly with the Georges Center François Leclerc, who joins the various centers for the fight against cancer available in France. It is truly a center of excellence on the three pillars that he has set himself, i.e. treatment, teaching and research. There are about 250 clinical trials available at the Center Georges François Leclerc around cancer, which is a very large number. The establishment is one of the first inclusive centers in France. I hope partly thanks to Oncoclic, but also thanks to the motivation of all the doctors and the participation of the patients.