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Photo by Erin Nelson.
The Fighting Cancer Network app is intended to give patients and caregivers trustworthy information and support as they go through cancer treatment.
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Photos by Erin Nelson.
Matt Scalici, president and CEO of the Fighting Cancer Network, sits at his desk in Brook Highland.
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Photos by Erin Nelson.
The Fighting Cancer Network provides a companion mobile app for patients and families for up-to-date information on different cancers and their treatment regimens.
A cup of coffee with an old friend and a stop on the way home from that meeting are what led Matt Scalici to a meaningful job opportunity to finish out his working career.
Scalici is the president and CEO of the Fighting Cancer Network, a recently launched app that he said will “change the paradigm of the cancer experience.”
In 2019, he received a phone call from a friend he hadn’t heard from in a while. Mike Ousley invited him to meet for coffee and presented to Scalici the concept of the Fighting Cancer Network.
Scalici said he instantly understood the problem Ousley was aiming to solve, and he shared some suggestions, but he initially said no when Ousley asked him to lead the project because it hit too close to home.
In 2015, Scalici’s wife of 34 years, Ginger, was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer and passed just away 25 days later.
“It felt too personal,” Scalici said. “I had the experience of my wife’s cancer, my dad passed away from cancer in 2001 and my mom is a cancer survivor.”
On his drive home, he stopped by the church where his wife is buried, Saint Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church on U.S. 119, where he prayed at the chapel and visited Ginger’s gravesite.
“I stopped by there because even as I walked away from Mike, having turned him down, it was nagging at me and I was resistant,” Scalici said. “I just didn’t want to say yes impulsively. It was something meaningful that would change people’s lives … and perhaps I was well qualified to take on the role.”
By the time he arrived at home, Scalici called Ousley and told him that he did indeed want to be involved in FCN.
Although Scalici had been an integral part of the startup of two television networks, EWTN Catholic Network and The Golf Channel, he didn’t know if he had the energy to do another startup. It wasn’t long, however, until he said he was “so completely energized” about the app and he couldn’t wait to get the content in the hands of doctors and patients.
“I know this is going to be a successful venture,” he said. “I realized it was exactly what I was meant to do.”
From diagnosis to treatment and beyond
Scalici said it’s important for people to understand what their medical options are, and when they search on their own, they will be met with thousands of returns from both reputable and disreputable sources.
“When a person is diagnosed with cancer, the person and caregiver are immediately put into a state of anxiety,” he said. “They crave information they need to understand their disease and know what their fate is and isn’t. While my wife’s story is tragic, most people who get cancer are treatable.”
Each type of cancer is such a specific disease, people can’t just read a general article on lung cancer, breast cancer or prostate cancer and come away with the knowledge they need, Scalici said.
“We understand what cancer patients and their caregivers really need,” he said. “What they need more than anything is information, relevant information, and they want to understand it, they don’t just want to absorb the words. They want to really understand the concepts.”
Scalici added that people often receive conflicting advice from friends or family about what they should do, which can shake their confidence from what their doctor tells them to do.
“The more we can strengthen the bond between you and your doctor, by giving you good, valid information, that hopefully everything your doctor says is right in line with what you saw on the Fighting Cancer Network,” he said. “If not, then you have reason to question. That doesn’t mean your doctor is wrong, but at least now, you know the questions to ask.”
About the app
The FCN app has been built and tested in Birmingham, and Scalici said it will remain headquartered here, even though the goal is nationwide use.
“It’s the perfect place to build a network because experts from all over the world live here,” he said. “Birmingham is a rich source of cancer resources, as good as any place you could choose.”
Scalici has lived in Brook Highland, Highland Lakes and currently lives in the area between Cahaba Heights and Liberty Park. The FCN headquarters are located on Brook Highland Parkway.
“It’s very familiar territory to me,” Scalici said. “I’ve been somewhere within a couple of miles north or south of this area almost my whole adult life, and I’m very comfortable here.”
Content development began in August 2019, then paused for a while during the pandemic. Scalici said it ended up being a blessing that provided time to flesh out the business plan.
“We developed our concept and by the end of 2021, we were raising capital,” he said. “By summer 2022, we had raised $700,000, which was our target to launch the pilot version of the app.”
Information provided on the app is guided by principles of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, which is recognized in the U.S. as an authority on recommended treatments for every specific cancer diagnosis. UAB is one of only 32 member institutions in the NCCN.
“We’ve designed our content around a reputable source that no hospital or medical practice would dispute,” Scalici said.
The pilot version of the app that is currently available focuses on only two types of cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer.
Both Scalici and Ousley had years of experience in television production and knew the importance of short videos, as a way for people to digest information faster and more easily.
“If we can show people, not with talking heads, but with images of the human body, of a procedure taking place of an MRI, a PET scan or the radiation devices and take you inside the body, it will help you understand what various procedures are like from diagnostics to treatment to reconstruction, in some cases, to recovery and survivorship, all the entire spectrum,” Scalici said.
Instead of seeing someone talk about a specific treatment, app users are taken behind the scenes, inside a diagnostic room and shown someone going through the procedure using 3D animation.
Scalici said he believes the content on the app is world-class, easy to watch and no more clinical than it needs to be.
“And all our content has been written by doctors, but edited by laypeople,” he said. “The hosts of our shows are not doctors, they are professional talent and some of them have actually had their own cancer experience.”
After downloading the app, the user can choose whether they are the patient, caregiver, family, friend or healthcare professional and then go through a series of questions to find out what the patient knows about cancer and help them at any point in their journey by curating relevant content.
Scalici describes it as a “Netflix for cancer” — not in a flippant way, but to describe how the app can line up programming that is specifically tailored to the user and feature a dashboard with recommended videos. Users can also select their own video playlist.
There is also a section on the app that features videos of doctors speaking about the specifics of each type of cancer. There are dozens of doctors that have partnered with FCN from across the country, including Harvard Medical, Massachusetts General, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, The Mayo Clinic, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and local doctors from UAB, St. Vincent’s and Grandview Medical Center.
“The doctor you talk to, he or she is responding to the questions you’re asking,” he said. “But they rarely have time to walk you through the breadth of options you have, because frankly, the way our medical system is set up, your doctor most likely has another dozen patients to see before the end of the day. So there’s only so much time. This is why doctors are endorsing our product and are participating. They have all contributed to the content in our app, because they see the need for patient education.”
In the future
Eighty percent of the investment capitalists for the app are in Birmingham, Scalici said, and FCN is currently in the midst of a capital campaign to raise $5 million to launch the network nationwide by summer 2024.
Once released nationally, the app will feature 10 cancers that represent about 70% of cancer diagnoses in the country: breast cancer, prostate cancer, lung (including bronchus) cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, endometrial cancer, bladder cancer, pancreatic cancer and pediatric cancers, as a group. Eventually, Scalici said, every cancer from A to Z will be included to produce a “comprehensive library of cancer content.”
“We will also be producing ancillary content including, nutrition, fitness, mental health, legal and financial information and much more,” he said.
Other cancers to be added sometime in the near future include all types of leukemia, kidney cancer, thyroid cancer, liver and bile duct cancer and Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
When the full release version of the app launches, Scalici said it will have a variety of other features, including:
Medication reminders
A notes section for the patient to write down things to ask their doctor at an upcoming visit
A My Story journal, similar to CaringBridge, where family and friends can receive updates when new posts are made
The ability to link videos to the journal posts, so those who are reading the updates can learn more about a particular procedure or treatment stage that the patient is undergoing
A glossary with definitions of medical terms
Scalici said FCN will partner with other companies that provide goods or services that a cancer patient might need, including grocery delivery, paying for rides to and from treatments from a service like Uber or Lyft, or paying for hotels if treatment is out of town.
“Rather than people bringing casseroles to your house, they can do something very practical on the app,” he said. “We will integrate it with the My Story piece, so people can gift those things [to the patient/their family].”
Scalici said he urges anyone reading this story who has cancer or is close to someone with cancer to download the app and test it.
For more information, visit fightingcancernetwork.com or download the Fighting Cancer Network App from the Apple app store or Google Play.
