OncWhat?

OncTalk is an expert-mediated site featuring cancer-specific information, ranging from current best practices to emerging therapies to controversial areas of oncology practice. Importantly, registered users can add questions, comments, objections, and raise additional questions to suggest the topics that would be most helpful for you. If you don’t see what you need, just ask for it!

The stakes are high with cancer, and everyone should benefit from the most current and best information available. And now the internet has changed everything. It is now possible for people from Alaska to New York to Istanbul to be part of a community of people who can share information, advice, and support.

Most communities do not have ready access to subspecialists in cancer types, but with treatment options changing so quickly, everyone could benefit from that.  While there is a great deal of education material available online, many sites with a huge amount of information can be hard to navigate and interpret, while the great interactive patient-oriented communities often don’t have expert opinions or information nearby.   OncTalk distills timely cancer information into important take home messages, a few paragraphs at a time, with links to more detailed information if you want it.

Ideally, what you see here can be integrated with recommendations from local physicians and other sources to ensure that patients are getting the best treatment possible. Rather than try to replace the oncologists and other physicians that patients have caring for them, OncTalk can provide another rich source to draw from.

About Me, About My Posts

I am a medical oncologist based in Seattle, WA, with a particular interest and expertise in lung cancer. I lead and participate in multiple clinical trials with both established and novel drugs for lung and other cancers. In addition to working regularly with my clinic patients, I travel frequently to give lectures at conferences and other settings, meet with my colleagues from other parts of the world who specialize in lung cancer, and write for journals and other educational programs in print and/or on the internet.

I expect that most of what is covered will be controversial enough that there is rarely a clear best answer, so I encourage readers to comment on and question my posts. I don’t want to portray my views as the gospel truth, but rather as one person’s informed expert recommendation. I participate in many panel discussions with other experts who I respect greatly and who share a great deal of knowledge, and there is still a great deal of room for controversy even among experts about how to approach challenging cases.

Importantly, because a great deal of medical management includes other individualized variables, my thoughts should be viewed through the prism of both the individual patient and the advice of their own physicians. Patient scenarios rarely if ever fit neatly into an idealized case, and my hope is to provide useful principles to help educate and empower patients and other physicians.

You don’t need to register to have access to posts, or to the discussion forum with questions and answers from members, but I hope you’ll be inclined to register so that you can leave comments, questions, objections, and requests for what other topics would be useful to you.

As of April 16, 2008, the website OncTalk has moved all of its post content over to the website of the nonprofit organization GRACE, or Global Resource for Advancing Education, which is supporting OncTalk’s activities and expanding the educational mission.   All new registrations, and subsequent comments and forum questions, will go through the GRACE website.  Registration for GRACE is available here.