Cancer Aid

Osara Health, founded as CancerAid, provides digital and human-delivered support for people affected by cancer and for their caregivers. The original CancerAid mobile app allowed patients to store diagnosis and treatment details, access condition-specific medical information, track and manage symptoms and medication, keep a personal journal, nominate a care team and family members through a "Champions" feature, and connect with a community of patients and survivors. A clinician-facing dashboard, ClinicianLink, was added to feed patient-reported information back into hospital workflows used by nurses, oncologists and radiologists.

The current offering is organized around a Cancer Coach Program and a Cancer Caregivers Program, which pair participants with a trained health coach providing one-on-one support by confidential phone call, SMS or email, alongside evidence-based educational resources covering topics such as sleep, uncertainty, communicating with doctors, returning to normal activities, and managing relationships. A survivorship offering supports people after active treatment. Programs are sold to organizations — including hospitals, health systems, insurers, professional associations and employers — as well as being made available to eligible individuals. The team includes oncologists, allied health professionals and other subject-matter experts.

Founding story

CancerAid was founded in 2016 by a group of Sydney oncologists who saw an opportunity to make patients active participants in their own cancer care. Co-founders Raghav Murali-Ganesh and Nikhil Pooviah met at the Chris O'Brien Lifehouse cancer treatment centre in Sydney, where Pooviah was a resident working with Murali-Ganesh in radiation oncology. After reviewing existing patient tools such as scheduling apps, Pooviah built an early patient-facing symptom tracker and community portal that became the basis of the product; Martin Seneviratne is also identified as a co-founder.

Business model

Premium app features and programs are licensed to organizations — cancer hospitals, payers and pharmaceutical companies — to improve symptom management, reduce hospital admissions and improve patient quality of life, while the patient-facing product has been offered free to end users. The company anticipated six-figure licensing deals with hospital systems for access to its full toolkit, and today markets separate "Osara for Organizations" and "Osara for Individuals" tracks.

Licensing of premium app features and coaching programs to healthcare institutions, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and employers rather than charging patients.

Traction

Reported 20,000 patients on the app and use within 80 of the 200 largest U.S. health systems as of May 2018, and 40,000 users across 24 countries with about $500K trailing-twelve-month revenue on an investor profile. Early customers included 17 healthcare organizations such as Chris O'Brien Lifehouse Hospital, MetroRehab Hospital and Hong Kong's Integrated Oncology Center. Published outcome figures cited by the company include 66% of participants showing improved physical and mental health, a 7x increase in activity levels, a 97% customer satisfaction score, and improvements in fatigue (53%), pain (32%) and overall quality of life (32%), with 73% more likely to return to work and prior daily activities. Named organizational customers include MinterEllison and the Central Adelaide Local Health Network.

Latest developments

The business rebranded from CancerAid to Osara Health in June 2023. It has since launched a survivorship-focused extension of its Cancer Coach Program, published 2026 research reporting that 66% of participants showed improved physical and mental health, and is marking its tenth year with a public declaration campaign. The Android app received a maintenance release (version 1.30.0) on 30 July 2024.