A story about what happens between a hospital visit and a kitchen table — and why the symptoms that matter most rarely make it into the chart.
Maria is 47, halfway through chemotherapy for breast cancer.
Between treatments, the fatigue and nausea come in waves — hard to describe, and harder to know if they're worth mentioning.
But it's at home where the symptoms are most intense. Fatigue builds throughout the day, sometimes leaving her unable to move. Other symptoms come and go without warning, shaping her experience in ways that are difficult to track or explain.
By the time she returns for her next appointment, the details have blurred. What she felt most clearly just days before is now harder to recall — the timing, the severity, even what felt important.
"I'm doing okay," she says — because it's easier than explaining everything she's forgotten.
What Maria doesn't realize is that these moments hold critical information — about how her body is responding, and what her care team could act on.
Maria's experience is not unique. For many patients, the most meaningful parts of treatment happen between visits — and too often, they go unseen.
Maria's experience isn't a personal failing — it's a structural one. Four recurring breakdowns shape how symptoms get lost between home and clinic.
Patients experience symptoms in real time — at home, between visits — but are asked to recall and report them later during clinical appointments.
Qualitative studies show a clear disconnect between when symptoms are most severe and when they are discussed, leading to missed or underreported issues (Laranjo et al., 2023).
Chemotherapy introduces fatigue and cognitive impairment, making it difficult for patients to accurately recall symptom timing and severity.
Patients significantly underreport severe symptoms when asked to recall over longer periods, as memory bias reduces the accuracy of peak symptom reporting (Basch et al., 2021).
Patients describe symptoms in varied, non-clinical language, while clinicians require structured, interpretable data.
As a result, up to 50% of symptoms may go undetected or unrecognized in clinical care (Laranjo et al., 2023).
Current monitoring approaches rely heavily on patient-initiated communication and fragmented phone-based systems, placing significant burden on patients to determine when and how to report symptoms.
(Laranjo et al., 2023)
Five findings from clinical literature that shaped how we approached the design of Our Path.
Electronic symptom monitoring improved survival by ~5 months and reduced emergency visits in a randomized controlled trial.
— Basch et al., 2017
Patients significantly underreport severe symptoms when relying on memory — near-real-time capture is essential.
— Basch et al., 2021
In PRO-TECT, automated symptom alerts enabled faster clinical responses and reduced overall symptom burden.
— Snyder et al., 2023
Many monitoring systems fail not from bad data, but from poor integration into clinical workflows.
— Absolom et al., 2019
Daily longitudinal symptom tracking predicts unplanned healthcare encounters better than isolated reports.
— Denis et al., 2019
We started here
"Patients aren't reporting their symptoms often enough."
We landed here
Patients don't need another form to fill out — they need a companion that captures their experience in real time, in their own words, and translates it into something their care team can act on.
Capture patient experiences in real time, preserve their meaning, and translate them into insights clinicians can act on.
Continue to the solution