Nuffield extends Careology partnership

Nuffield Health and digital cancer platform Careology have renewed their partnership for a further three years.

The charitable hospital provider first piloted the platform, which connects patients to their healthcare team digitally, at its Derby site in 2022. Since then the partnership has expanded across Nuffield Health’s oncology network of ten hospitals offering systemic anti-cancer therapy (SACT) services.

Using the digital platform, patients can log symptoms, monitor side effects and track medications from home, with information shared directly with their clinical team. This provides greater visibility of patients’ wellbeing between appointments and enables clinicians to intervene more quickly when support or treatment adjustments are needed.

Nuffield said patient engagement rates with Careology had hit 95% this year – a 22% rise on 2025.

Julie Little, clinical head of nursing oncology at Nuffield Health Derby Hospital, said: ‘Keeping patients safe is the most important thing we do. Often, patients tell us they only contacted the team because Careology prompted them to, believing their symptoms were nothing to worry about. In reality, some required urgent clinical support. By helping us identify issues sooner, the app has enabled us to step in quickly and prevent patients from becoming seriously unwell.’

Research from the partnership, presented at the International Society of Oncology Pharmacy Practitioners (ISOPP) Congress, demonstrated how symptom information reported through Careology helped identify higher rates of treatment-related mouth toxicity among certain patient groups. The insight resulted in a change to prescribing prophylactic pathways, with preventative mouthwash now incorporated for patients receiving specific chemotherapy regimens across Nuffield Health hospitals.

Elisa Mills, cancer services national lead at Nuffield Health, said: ‘Working with Careology has not only directly supported individual patient care, it has provided us with the tools and insights to identify trends, enabling us to make changes that improve care for future patients. The findings presented at ISOPP show how powerful the information patients share with us can be.’