The journey
A misdiagnosis.
A fight. A turning point.
In 2021, my spouse was misdiagnosed. The word that came with it — palliative — was meant to signal the end of a road. But something didn't fit. The diagnosis didn't match what I was seeing, what I was reading, what I knew.
I am a medical communications professional with a life sciences background. I knew how to read clinical evidence. I knew which questions cut through. I knew how to push for the right tests and refuse to accept an answer that didn't hold up.
"That advocacy shifted the misdiagnosis into the right diagnosis — and the treatment intent from palliative to curative."
The outcome changed because I had the knowledge to change it. But sitting in those waiting rooms, talking to other families — it became impossible to ignore who doesn't get that same chance.
Most families don't have
what we had.
What I brought to that fight wasn't courage — it was access. Access to scientific literacy. To an understanding of how the healthcare system works. To the language of oncology. To the confidence to push back.
A cancer diagnosis arrives with an avalanche of information that most people are not equipped to process — often at the worst moment of their lives. The education materials handed out across Ontario's cancer centres are written at a Grade 9 reading level, three levels above what health literacy standards recommend. The appointment ends. The questions start. And there is nowhere adequate to turn.
Of Ontarians are expected to develop cancer in their lifetime. Nearly one in two people will face this — most without the insider knowledge needed to navigate it effectively.
Ontario Cancer Statistics 2024, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario)The gap between patients who can advocate for themselves and those who cannot is not a gap in courage or intelligence. It is a gap in access to the right information, at the right time, in a form people can actually use.
Turning experience
into expertise.
That experience didn't leave me — it redirected me. I enrolled in a Master of Health Industry Administration (MHIA), completing the degree in 2024, to build the formal foundation that would make the next chapter of my career purposeful rather than reactive.
The MHIA gave me fluency in how health systems are organized, funded, and governed — and how those structures shape the patient experience at every touchpoint. It connected my existing scientific and communications background to the operational and policy realities of healthcare delivery. The gaps patients face are rarely the result of indifference. They are structural — built into how information flows, how care is coordinated, and how the system measures success.
"The personal experience gave me the question. The education gave me the framework to answer it properly."
Patient family advisor,
Ontario Health.
In October 2023, I became a Patient Family Advisor at Ontario Health — a voluntary role that has kept me close to the patient perspective while giving me a formal channel to contribute to how the system thinks about care design and delivery.
In that capacity, I have contributed to the development of the Ontario Cancer Plan 6 (OCP6) — the provincial framework that guides cancer care priorities, strategy, and investment across Ontario. Being part of that process — bringing the patient and caregiver perspective into a policy document that shapes care delivery across the province — reinforced how much the lived experience of navigating cancer is still underrepresented in the planning of the system itself.
Outside of the formal advisory role, I have presented my lived experience to clinical and professional audiences — sharing what the caregiving journey looked like from the inside, and what it surfaced about the information and navigation gaps that patients face. I have also worked informally with patients and families on a voluntary basis, helping them make sense of medical information and understand their options at points in the care journey where clarity matters most.
"The clearest signal from all of that work is consistent: people don't lack the will to engage with their care. They lack the right support to do it effectively."
Project manager,
Toronto Central North
Regional Cancer Program.
I joined the Toronto Central North Regional Cancer Program as a project manager — working at the intersection of regional strategy and operational delivery across one of Ontario's most complex cancer networks.
The role involved developing and implementing regional cancer strategy — translating system-level priorities into practical plans across hospital programs, community settings, and multidisciplinary care teams. I also supported the transition of cancer screening programs, which required coordinating across clinical, operational, and community stakeholder groups while managing the practical realities of change in a large health system.
Average reading level of systemic therapy patient education materials across 14 Ontario cancer centres — three grades above the recommended standard. I saw this gap from the inside. Cansarty is built to close it.
Papadakos et al., Supportive Care in Cancer, 2020 (Ontario-specific study)That experience gave me something more useful than a point of view — it gave me operational knowledge of how cancer care is actually delivered and coordinated in Ontario. Where the handoffs happen, where patient information gets lost, and what it would realistically take to improve continuity of support at scale.
Building what should
already exist.
Each step of that journey — caregiver, graduate, patient family advisor, project manager — pointed toward the same gap, described from a different angle. The question I kept returning to was straightforward:
"What if every cancer patient had access to the kind of informed, rigorous support that actually changes outcomes — regardless of their background or prior knowledge of the system?"
Today, 705,654 Ontarians are living with a cancer diagnosis. Every one of them is navigating a system that was not designed for their questions — a system that generates crucial signals about patient understanding, fear, and decision-making, and then lets those signals disappear.
People in Ontario living with cancer right now — navigating appointments, treatments, side effects and decisions, largely without adequate support between clinical visits.
Ontario Cancer Statistics 2024, Ontario Health (Cancer Care Ontario)Cansarty is the answer I landed on. An AI-augmented service that gives every patient and caregiver access to the kind of informed, rigorous support that I was in a position to provide for my spouse — built on a clinical and scientific evidence base, designed within the realities of Ontario's care system, and structured to generate meaningful intelligence for the organizations that serve them.
What Cansarty
is built to do.
Cansarty sits at the intersection of everything that came before it — a caregiving experience that identified the gap, an MHIA that provided the system lens, a Patient Family Advisor role that kept the patient perspective active and formal, direct patient support work that validated the need at the individual level, a contribution to OCP6 that engaged with the provincial policy framework, and project management experience within a Regional Cancer Program that grounded it all in operational reality.
Our mission
To give every cancer patient and caregiver access to the informed, evidence-based support that improves outcomes — and to transform those patient interactions into organizational intelligence that helps hospitals and pharma partners deliver better, more responsive cancer care across Ontario and beyond.