Stockholm-based WarOnCancer is on a mission to radically improve mental health for everyone affected by cancer. Earlier this year the company launched the WarOnCancer app – a social networking app for patients, survivors and loved ones.
Founded in 2015, the startup has just raised €840k from H&M executive Karl-Johan Persson, Kivra founder Stefan Krook, and Daniel Pilotti, founder of Ryska Posten.
WarOnCancer’s vision is to unite people affected by cancer on a global level through storytelling. It is also developing a unique data-sharing feature, ’Track your Impact’ (currently under development), which will enable members who choose to share health data to track who is using their data and the value it is generating. The company believes that by empowering cancer patients to contribute to research and make informed decisions about their care, facilitating what they call ‘altruistic happiness’, WarOnCancer can help improve their mental health.
“We are above and beyond proud that such highly esteemed investors are backing us on our mission to radically improve mental health situation for everyone affected by cancer,” said Fabian Bolin, CEO & Co-founder of WarOnCancer. Fabian’s experience with leukaemia in 2015 led him and his best friend Sebastian Hermelin to found WarOnCancer.
“Having recently finished 900 days of chemotherapy for leukaemia, I am well aware of the mental trauma that comes with cancer,” said Bolin. “To us, the missing element in most solutions addressing mental health for cancer is self-worth. Most initiatives and health platforms today are targeted around patient empowerment – the idea that by becoming a more informed patient and by taking a more active role, they will feel better on a mental level. However, my biggest wish when I was going through cancer, was to feel and be treated like a human being. Yet the healthcare system at large is not equipped with either the resources nor efficient tools to address this. With our platform, we hope to revolutionise healthcare and center it around the needs of the patients.”
“Fabian and Sebastian made a big impression on me through their engagement in turning their own experiences into a positive and visionary attempt at changing global cancer care,” said Krook, one of the round’s investors and the initiator of Tech4Good. “They have a service that will contribute to individuals’ well-being while complementing the clinical treatment process. At the same time they want to create the same life-saving value out of sharing patient-reported data, such as sharing blood in blood donations.”
By uniting the patient community on a social network, WarOnCancer can act as the bridge between patients and the life science industry, providing insights that are currently difficult to attain. The company has already signed partnerships with six leading pharmaceutical companies in the fields of oncology and immunotherapy.
Recent findings from the Research!Sweden suggests that 95% of patients are willing to share their health data, as long as they understand why.
“It’s a way for us to facilitate altruistic happiness to tackle the mental health problem,” said Sebastian Hermelin, Co-founder and Head of Data & Industry Partnerships at WarOnCancer. “We’re turning data-sharing into a value proposition for our members – something that they can understand and be proud of.”
With the funds, WarOnCancer will focus on strengthening the tech team and prepare for international expansion towards the end of the year.
