Before You Trust Any Tele-Oncology Cancer Program — Ask These Questions | Dr. Dino Prato

What if I told you one of the most dangerous things in cancer is not always the cancer itself, but it's the advice you get for treatment? Because right now, all over the country, cancer patients are leaving their appointments scared, overwhelmed, and alone. Then they go online, they're trying to find help and get answers. What they find are programs that promise guidance and detox programs and magical cures and programs that promise precision oncology from home. Some of the help is real, but some of it truly can be harmful, and families need to know the difference. This is a much bigger problem than you may think it is because many people are turning to tele-oncology, trying to get assistance from home while doing care. But some of the care isn't real and it can be navigating you in the wrong direction. And if you or someone you love is fighting cancer, you need to know what you're doing because it can waste momentum, delay better decision-making, create false confidence. So stay with me because in this video I'm gonna give you questions that's gonna expose to you a weak cancer program from a good one. By end of this video, you're gonna know the difference and you're gonna be able to really understand what precision oncology is and how to help yourself yourself or a loved one. I'm Dr. Dino Prato, founder of Invita Medical Center. For the last 25 years, my team and I have worked to help thousands of patients who failed some of the top cancer hospitals in the country. How do we do it? Through precision targeting, custom drug design, custom immunotherapy design, and helping our patients respond. Before you change anything, make sure you're working with a doctor, and let's get started. So here's the thing: people are looking for cancer help, and rightfully so. They don't get enough time with their doctor, so most people are looking for care from home. Why? Because they need assistance, they need direction, and they need true guidance, but cancer patients are often overwhelmed and so are their families because the doctor may not have the time or the training. And that in a lot of ways can be hurting a patient because if they can actually get the right guidance, you can get 1 1 11. That's the goal, right? Going beyond just the standard of care, the one-size-fits-all model that everybody's using. Two patients with the exact same cancer types will have totally different markers and need different care. And that's where real precision oncology can make a big difference, even if you're using teleoncology. So some of the questions patients have I've just finished cancer treatment. I'm wondering, is the treatment working? I feel horrible and the doctor says, let's wait for imaging and scans. Are these side effects normal? Because I'm going through a ton of side effects. How do I overcome these? Why am I getting weaker? Is there anything I can do to improve my energy, my stamina, my health? What should I eat? What should I avoid? How should I take dietary supplements? Or are those dietary supplements going to interfere with my care, making my care not work? Is my immune system getting stronger or weaker? What else should be driving this cancer treatment? These are great questions and you're not getting those answered in standard of care. I can tell you now, I've been doing been doing this for almost 26 years, it's not happening. So that's why patients are looking. And if you're going to use teleoncology, you need somebody watching the care. They're looking at the markers. They can tell if treatment is working before it works, meaning leading indicators, not lagging indicators. Before imaging and tumor markers, they can tell if the treatment's working. They should be able to help you with immunotherapy targeting and customize your care. That goes, yes, into diet and supplement support, but even way beyond that, the right oncology targets. A lot of these programs are doctors who want to support you, or nutritionists, or PhDs while you're going through standard oncology. The The problem is, what if standard oncology is off? Over 90% of the patients we treat are on the wrong treatments when they come to us. Why? Because they lack detailed testing. So the first thing you want to solve is, am I on the right medications and on the right targets? Because that is going to change the cancer journey significantly. Are we using leading indicators— methylation, ct-free DNA, circulating tumor cells? Do we understand if the treatment is working way before we're waiting for imaging and tumor markers, which is already too late, so that you're not fooled into the wrong kind of support? And I think there are some people doing great work out there, but you need to know the difference between what's good and those that I think are not really that good so that you can make those decisions. So let's assume you're looking at what's caused your cancer, what's affecting your immune system, is the treatment working, am I on the right combinations and targets? Because it doesn't matter how you deliver the care if you're on the wrong care, right? You need the right care. And that gives you the reassurance that you're on a smooth program. It's not a one-size-fits-all, it's correct for your markers. You're changing other dietary lifestyle components that are going to help your care, build immunity. All these things are very important. So you're not fooled into, yeah, just I spoke to a doctor or a PhD or somebody who's guiding me in a direction, what is their clinical experience in treating cancer patients and how much data and information do they have on you and can they help you put it together for you? So this gives you a more polished cancer treatment plan and helps you to go deeper so that you can get the care you want. That's the part of the story that every cancer patient wants to know. See, there's this big market growing in the area of tele-oncology and there's nothing wrong with it, but a lot of it began with groups like Walmart. They had some of their people that developed these self-funded employee programs. Then they broke off and did deals with Mayo Clinic and other groups where they were selling to self-funded employer plans these cancer navigation programs. For a long time, it was a way to navigate people into cheaper drugs so they didn't have to pay the high specialty drugs, and it was to find generics and help them more than anything stay compliant to the treatment. And to me, that is not precision oncology. The first thing you want to find out is, is the doctor you're seeing putting you on the right medications? Did they do deep enough testing to make sure the drugs you're taking are correct? Now, we can't control your oncologist's, you know, doses they're going to use because you're not in clinic, but when you're at a distance, we can tell you these are the right drugs, these are not the right drugs, here's the right thing you need for immunity, here's the right things you can combine on and off label to support that care. That's the kind of targeting you want to know, because a lot of the programs will use these words like advanced, modern, integrative, precision. We've been doing this, it's a PhD. You need somebody who's been literally working with many thousands and thousands of cancer patients for many years and knows how to guide and provide assistance that can actually change your care. That's why I'm always saying work with a doctor who knows what they're doing, because then they can actually maybe connect with your oncologist or guide you or give you some direction to the gaps that you're missing. Because this isn't just theory, this is immune system work, this is understanding what's blocked in your treatment and how to support the patient's tumor microenvironment, change their nutrition, gut microbiome, make sure they have the right pharmacogenomics. Can they metabolize the drugs? See, these are the questions you're going to want to ask. What is the toxicity of the chemotherapy? Are we taking too much? Can we clean it out of the body? Can we combine it with another adjuvant? Can we track the information so we know that the patient is responding to care? That's what you want in a teleoncology program, and I think that could be of great help for people, especially if you're an earlier stage disease or you're in the middle of care and you're not certain if things are working correctly. This is a good place to start for some patients because otherwise a lot of these programs can be a scam. They can really more than waste money, push you in the wrong direction, promising cures and, you know, outcomes that are not connected to data. So serious data, serious work, serious doctors— that's what you want. And you want honesty and transparency. That's the key. Now I'm going to tell you, in my clinical experience, conventional care is just standard of care. It is nowhere near the best It's standard, it's minimum. The best care is precision. It requires more testing, more custom design of the drug, more delivery. But that's where we see in our clinical experience 35 times better outcomes and 43 times better quality of life, as we published in our 2024 paper, because that's what precision oncology can do for many patients. But you have to ask the right questions, make sure you're working with the right precision oncology group. So here's the first question: do you already have a protocol before you understand my biology? Meaning, do you put everybody on the same thing? If they already know what they're going to put you on before you start care, they looked at your markers and deep testing and history and treatment path, then you already have a red flag. Next question: what are you testing for? Are you looking for targets that my doctors are— might be missing? That's the biggest help here. Be careful because on the surface they might run a biomarker, which is some DNA next-generation sequencing, but you want to know, is the treatment I'm using working? And then the next question: how do you know whether the treatment is going to work or not? You want to look at leading indicators— methylation scores, ct-free DNA, CTCs— and that data tells us way before the tumor markers and the imaging if treatment is working. How early can we detect failure? Almost immediately in precision oncology, which is so important because if you're not moving in the right direction, you need to make those changes so you're on the trajectory to a better outcome. If they can't answer that question clearly, leave. Are you heavy on coordinating, meaning navigating and making sure I'm taking my medicines, or on clinical direction? Because what you need is clinical direction, not just coordinators. You need people that are able to step in more than just a concierge and be there for you. You need to ask, are the doctors available 24/7 in the sense that if something comes up, a nausea, a side effect, you need to be able to pick up the phone and talk to a doctor in the middle of the night, any time of the day. So you're never alone. That's critical in telehealth oncology because side effects, symptoms pop up and you need someone there to hold your hand, guide you, provide the love and support you need. Because oftentimes things do happen and you can't reach your doctor. They're not, they're not there for you. Maybe they have too many patients or you're out, you're calling some nurse on a helpline instead of actually connecting with a physician who can coordinate, call a prescription in for you, or guide you immediately with care. Some of these teleoncologies are more of navigation, Like if you look at companies like Quantum that do this for self-funded plans, all that is is a service that's booking appointments and coordinating your treatment planning. That's not effective. That in my opinion is not precision oncology. In fact, it's not at all. It's just moving paperwork around and you need more than that. You need more than just basic navigation. Next question. Who's actually making the clinical decisions? Do we have a physician who's actually worked with cancer patients, done precision care that's directly involved here to give me information? Not just a PhD, not just a nutritionist, all those might be parts of your team, but who's the physician? Who's making the call? Is this a physician that works in this precision oncology space, or is it a nurse, a navigator, a coach, a PhD, whoever it might be? Who is it? Is it a call center? You want to know because that's the next question. You need to have a physician who can talk to your doctor, make recommendations, because sometimes there might be conflict there, and that's okay because that's what you want— somebody fighting for you so that oncology precision strategy can be put to work. The next question: do you look at the whole person? You know, are we looking at immunity, functional medicine, inflammation, root cause analysis like I've talked about? What what's causing the cancer, mitochondrial health, on-off-label adjuvant drugs. How do we look at tools to hold remission? Because a lot of these programs can be really helpful, particularly in early-stage cancers or in the middle of care, to give you that edge. And so if they're not doing that, you're not getting precision oncology, and I'd work with a different team because those components you're not getting in standard of care, and you need those to support you so you have more energy, more health, better recovery, and tools to help you hold remission. So it's not just let's wait for your next test and look at a scan, but there's things we can do on the diet, lifestyle, other components that can help go deeper, deeper testing, smarter targeting, upgrading monitoring. That's what you want. That's true personalization. These questions are the ones— if you can get the answers to these, you're in the right hands. If you're getting answers back like, oh, we don't do that type of testing, no, we don't look at that root cause analysis, no, we're not available 24/7, no, we don't do early, early monitoring to see if treatment is working, no, we don't custom build programs to make sure your program's correct, you're not in the right program. That's what you want to focus on, because when done correctly, precision oncology can help patients immensely, especially those who can't come and travel to certain precision oncology clinics. Like, you know, we do this for our patients, but these doctors that are trained in this space can provide great help to you, at least give you guidance and provide support along the way so you're not left alone. And so what should you expect from these programs? Obviously they're not going to take over your full oncology program because you're already in care in standard of care oncology. These are called supportive programs, but the teleoncology can be really helpful. And if you need care and that isn't working, Ideally, it's connected to a clinic that can help you come in and get the care you need or fill the gaps that were not provided by your current physician and monitor remission, help hold remission, look at those root causes. And this should help reduce chaos and fear and provide clarity and decision-making. So that's why I think these programs are going to grow and they're exciting, but they have to be done correctly. Ideally, you're working with a great doctor. You have all these things dialed in and it's just adding to your success of healing. It's a part of your team. It's a concierge team building your immune system, reducing inflammation, making sure your treatment treatments are working, improving your quality of life. That's the real goal, because cancer is really about the data and the details, and the oversight is so important. So I hope you found this episode helpful. Tele-oncology is a thing. It's a big industry. It's growing from like $5 billion to $30 billion all through the United States because more and more people are unhappy with their standard of care oncology. They feel like a one-size-fits-all. There's a lot of fears of going home, side effects, not knowing what to do after treatment. By having a good tele-oncology team, it can give you a huge advantage, but it has to be the right one, and you have to have the right questions you can ask. I hope you found this episode helpful. Help us get the word out there on precision oncology so we can help more people get precision care and get out of the one-size-fits-all. May the Lord bless you on your journey to healing. Mm-hmm! [FOREIGN LANGUAGE]