You can start from anywhere!

The CHC is designed to be able to jump in anywhere and explore information. It depends on where you are in your cancer journey, and your need for information.

In dealing with cancer, you need to have a broad understanding of a wide diversity of knowledge, and go deeper into particular aspects when necessary. It depends on;

• Where you are in the cancer journey.
• Your personal need for information: How much do you need, and how much do you want.
• Who you have in your 100 Healing Circle: Either you want to know yourself, or perhaps you have a 'Researcher' who takes that responsibility.

Your Information Needs

We can think about people who have knowledge and our own need for knowledge in terms of being 'I', 'T' or 'M' types of people;

To beat cancer you, or someone in your Healing Circle, needs to be an 'M' person, with the depth of knowledge in multiple areas 'as deep as necessary' to make and implement a suitable Healing Plan. We don't want to - and cannot - replace trained medical practitioners. But we do need to become competent sparring partners!

Conventional medical practitioners - doctors - are trained as 'T's. Hopefully you have a Multi-Disciplinary Team (MDT) acting on your behalf to expand their collective knowledge. Sadly, this is often not the case and you as a patient or researcher have to fill the gaps in between.

Medical Specialists and many Complementary Treatment providers are 'I's. Good in a narrow field: They sell what they've got, but can't help you pull it all together.

Your information need can be summarized as follows;

The newbie

• Where the hell do I start? Get your head around the problem and what can be done

TL;DR - 'Need to Know' only

• Get the big picture, understand the concepts and vocabulary to engage with medical professionals
• Sufficient knowledge to be a self-advocate and not let 'the system' dictate the treatment path without proper consideration of the alternatives

The Deep Diver

• Wants to know the ins and outs to support decision making
• The hard core self-advocate or Researcher in your Healing Circle

The Seasoned Campaigner

• Keep up to date with the moving target of knowledge
• Came across a new idea - what do we know about it?
• Got progress results back: Need to revisit the Plan

Using Links to external resources

External resources are referred to extensively where they provide useful information, and as sources of evidence and further research. The benefit of doing so is that such information is compiled and maintained in a regulated manner so that the information is reliable and periodically updated.

External references are made to publicly available information from medical authorities or organizations.

Organization of the CHC

Use of Tags to join the dots

Tags are used as labels on substances / therapies, actors / actions and targets of treatment (ToT's). These connections are visible in the Knowledge Graph and searchable to look for connections and interactions. In notes, the Tags are arranged as follows;

Tag structure

!150

• '#' is the symbol denoting a Tag
• prefix (see prefix list below)
• target
• / nested target delimiter (optional)
• super-target (optional)

Prefixes

Prefixes are a shorthand describing how the 'target' is affected;

• UR upregulate
• DR downregulate
• IH inhibit
• IC increase
• ID induce
• DC decrease
• BK block
• M modulate
• N normalize
• R restore
• SP support
• SY synergistic or synergizes with
• X interaction

Suggested Workflow

Making your plan