ACE Meeting Tuesday, March 10, 2026. Presented by Brad Powers.
At the Cancer Patient Lab (nonprofit) and Navis Health (for-profit startup) we are helping cancer patients and caregivers navigate the medical system and complex testing and treatment decisions. Some (contrarian) beliefs we have developed include: – The standard of care won’t get you your best outcomes. There is a lag between evidence and widespread acceptance. Standards are based on population averages, not personalized to you. – Maximize testing, even if there’s no obvious rationale for the treatment decision immediately in front of you. Always get genomics at diagnosis. (Looking at slides – histology – is insufficient.) – Choose drug combinations with personalized dosing. (Avoid the single drug at maximum tolerated dose until failure, unless chemo is your only option.) Try to hit multiple pathways simultaneously. We are at the cutting edge of using AI to educate patients and caregivers and generate hypotheses to validate. We can address the information asymmetry with your medical team and enable active participation in your care decisions —> engaged patients get better outcomes.
In 2018 Brad Power was a process innovation researcher and consultant with over 35 years of experience and an author of over 75 articles for the Harvard Business Review when he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Brad went through a standard course of chemotherapy, which led to “no evidence of disease” for four years. He decided he wanted to help patients and caregivers navigate complex decisions beyond the standard of care. He ran three “hackathons” (open crowds of diverse experts) for several cancer patients facing complex decisions. In 2022 Brad launched Cancer Patient Lab with two advanced prostate cancer patients to help them and other patients make complex testing and treatment decisions, learn, and accelerate innovation. In 2024 Brad and his partner Ari Akerstein launched an accelerator for cancer navigation startups (CancerHacker Lab). In 2025 Brad and Ari launched Navis Health, offering cancer navigation services using AI, curated connections to experts and services, a community of engaged cancer patients and caregivers, and a health data vault
