Niloufar Saadat

Cancer Care Companion (CCC) responds to a persistent system problem in Canadian cancer care: treatment is time-sensitive, and one important component of system-level delay is fragmented care, where health records do not transfer between primary care, specialists, hospitals, labs, oncology teams, emergency care, or provinces when needed. Even when records can be requested, long wait times can be detrimental. Patients and caregivers often become the manual transfer system, carrying printouts, portal exports, lab results, medication changes, referral notes, and summaries. New providers struggle to search, trust, or use those documents because trust, reliability, source, and patient privacy remain technical concerns. Patients and caregivers also must recall and schedule treatment plans, track appointments, monitor symptoms, remember warning signs, and repeat their history frequently.

CCC is a patient-held, caregiver-supported digital continuity record for this broken handoff layer. It does not replace EMRs or solve national interoperability; it helps patients and caregivers organize, verify, remember, and transfer credible cancer-care information while systems remain fragmented. The app includes Official Health Records, Reliable Appointment Summary, Daily Check-in, Treatment Timeline, and care-tracking calendar.

Official records can be scanned or uploaded. Pattern-recognition logic reads metadata such as document type, date, provider, institution, and source, then asks the patient or caregiver to confirm before saving it. Appointment Summary uses recorded visits and AI-supported summarization to create structured summaries linked to original audio, so information remains checkable. Clinicians can review and confirm summaries through a clinic add-on or app viewer through shareable link or invite code.

Daily Check-in tracks symptoms, side effects, severity, duration, questions, and concerns. Treatment Timeline maps treatment sessions, reminders, and next steps. Caregivers can be active co-users, while patients control privacy through access levels, locked sections, and revocable permissions.

CCC turns scattered cancer information into a portable, trustworthy treatment story for providers and long-term recall.

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Niloufar Saadat is a health designer, user researcher, and product designer with a Bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design and professional experience in user research, UX design, product design, and medical product design. Her background includes peer-reviewed research in ergonomic and human-centred product design, as well as conference-presented work on sensory perception, emotion, and embodied design. She has completed the Master of Design in Design for Health program at OCAD University, where her graduate work expanded her practice from product and experience design into healthcare systems, services, and digital health. During her graduate studies, she worked on healthcare design challenges connected to Baycrest, St. Michael’s Hospital, Moyo Health & Community Services, and health-sector partners. Her design practice combines systems thinking, service design, research, and emerging technologies to translate complex human needs into practical, usable, and system-aware responses for healthcare systems and services.