Built with young people and families

Ditto is a partnered with Young Lives vs Cancer to help children and young people with cancer, and their families, hold on to what they're told about their care

Ditto records medical appointments and turns them into summaries in plain language. Because nobody takes in everything that's said in a hospital appointment, least of all on the day of a diagnosis. With Ditto you can go back to it days or months later, and share it with the people who need to know.

Charities like Young Lives vs Cancer don't put their name to things lightly, and they don't ask families to trust something they haven't checked themselves. We were checked. Here's what that looked like from our side.

The idea didn't come from Ditto

Long before we had ever spoken to Young Lives vs Cancer, members of their Voice Board (the children, young people and parents with lived experience of cancer who help the charity's Trustees and Directors make decisions) had been talking among themselves about wanting all their medical information in one place.

A sort of digital passport, in language they understood, belonging to them.

They felt strongly enough about it to take it to a Trustees meeting and say it was something they really needed. By the time Ditto arrived, the brief already existed. We hadn't written it.

We were put in front of families before anything was agreed

While the partnership was still being decided, Young Lives vs Cancer put us in front of the young people and families it would affect, with no obligation on anyone to approve us.

Those conversations went on for a while.

We spoke to parents in the middle of treatment, and parents more than a decade on from it. To young people who were diagnosed as teenagers and are now managing their own care as adults. To dads and to partners. To a single parent doing all of it without family nearby.

And to the charity's Social Workers, who checked whether any of it would hold up in real practice.

We'd rather be told early that something doesn't work than find out after a family has relied on it.

What stayed with us was how people said yes

Not the feedback itself. The way it was given.

A young person still in treatment told us: "I sat in waiting rooms wanting there to be something like this… It really is answering a need."

A young person diagnosed at 14 said simply: "It sounds incredible. I definitely will be downloading."

And a mum more than a decade on from her son's diagnosis said: "Ditto would have been amazing eleven years ago. I'm really happy you're working on this."

That last one is the hard part of this work. We can't do anything about eleven years ago but we can make sure the next family doesn't say the same thing in eleven years' time.

We rebuilt the Ditto app around what they told us

One thing came up again and again: a young person's cancer is never held by one person. Parents who may not live in the same house. A grandparent doing the school run. A teenager who'll be an adult before treatment ends.

Thousands of people are already using Ditto, but we had built it around a single account holder. One login, one record, one person. Families said plainly that this didn't match their lives: so we changed it.

A patient record can now be held by more than one adult, each with their own login and the same view of what's happening. Other people can be given access to part of it without seeing all of it.

And a young person can have an account of their own, so that when they're ready to manage their own care, their record goes with them rather than staying in a parent's app.

None of that existed when we started talking. It was designed around what these families said they needed, and we built and released it before the partnership was announced.

We didn't want to be introduced to families on the strength of something we'd promised to build later.

They're all still involved. You can be too.

We've gone back to the same families to test what we built, and we're still changing it when they tell us we've got it wrong. Every one of them asked to stay involved.

If you'd like to take part and give feedback on what gets built next, you can sign up here.

If you'd like to start using Ditto now, to record, summarise and share what's said in appointments, you can download the app for free.

You can also read more about what we're doing together at dittocare.com/ylvc.