From Overwhelm to Clear Goals: Why We’re Building Oncoly

The moment that changed everything

I was at the Győri ETO Football Academy, mid‑summer pre‑season. I’d had a constant headache for weeks and kept blaming the heat and the stress. My mental coach pulled me aside and said, “This isn’t normal—please get an MRI.” So I went to a test on Wednesday before training and then straight from that scan to training, thinking nothing of it.

In my first class back at school, my phone rang. It was my mother, she never calls during the day. She said, “You have a brain tumour. We’re on our way. We need to go to the oncology centre in the capital NOW.” I walked out of the building to the river near the academy and cried until my parents arrived. Three days later I had life‑saving surgery. I don’t want to imagine what would have happened if I had ignored my mental coach’s advice.

When information comes faster than clarity

Those three days between diagnosis and surgery were a blur. I went through what felt like a dozen tests and a tidal wave of paperwork. After the operation, the team could take a small biopsy but couldn’t remove the tumour because of its position. We faced a huge decision: trust the plan, which includes intensive chemotherapy followed by radiotherapy or search for other options.

When we asked about alternatives, the answer was polite but clear: “If you want to explore other paths, you’ll need to research them yourselves.” I can still picture our family in the clinic: a pile of results in medical language, my mother desperately searching online for credible sources, my father, brother and I trying to stay positive and not fully processing what was happening. It raised a simple but heavy question: How do you make the best decision when you’re not an oncologist and you don’t have time to become one?

Patients don’t lack effort. They lack a clear path. Important details live in different places. Support comes in pieces. Decisions often arrive before clarity.

The choice and the spark

My family and I chose to trust the oncology team’s plan and to support my body in every way we could: mental resilience, nutrition, and the right kind of movement. I’m grateful that I’d already worked with a mental coach for two years, had experience with sports nutritionists, and knew the academy’s strength‑and‑conditioning coaches. I had a network.

But that sparked a second question in me: What about the person who doesn’t have that network or the time or money to build it? How do they find trusted guidance, quickly, in the middle of everything?

That question became Oncoly.

What Oncoly does (in plain language)

Oncoly focuses on four levers patients can influence alongside their medical care:

• Treatment timeline (clarity). A plain‑language view of what’s next and how to prepare.
• Personalised guidance. Practical tips for nutrition, physical activity and mental strength, tailored to your situation.
• Smart record organiser. Labs, scans, documents and side‑effects in one place, structured for more productive clinic visits.
• Private support circle. Invite family, friends or a coach to follow your journey. You choose who sees what.

We’re also building helpful tools around these pillars, like pill reminders and a simple log for symptoms and side‑effects, small wins add up.

How we build. Safely and respectfully

We keep the implementation simple on the outside and careful on the inside:

• Evidence‑informed guidance with sources you can trace in plain language.
• Privacy by design: minimal data, strong security, and user control (export or delete your data, invite or revoke access).
• Safety guardrails: explanations in everyday words and clear boundaries. Information only, not replacing medical advice.

What this means for you

If Oncoly had existed during my treatment, my mother would have spent less time sifting through the internet for reliable answers. We would have had fewer arguments driven by different coping styles and more shared clarity about the next step. Clinic visits could have been more focused. Our energy could have gone where it mattered—healing—rather than into the admin of illness.

That’s our aim for every user: less time piecing things together, more time getting better. Clear goals, one place, your pace.

Where we are now

We were honoured to be named winners of Science Park Jönköping’s Impact Demo Day 2025. That recognition motivates us to move faster, but it also reminds us to stay humble and keep listening.

Right now we’re refining our MVP with patient feedback and preparing a closed beta. We’re also looking for:

• a Lead AI Engineer (LLM / medical NLP) to architect our recommendation module;
• a Scientific Advisor to vet sources and keep us honest; and
• collaboration with a private oncology clinic specialised in diagnostic testing for pilot work.

If you’re undergoing treatment and want to help us sharpen Oncoly, we’d love to hear from you.

Join us

Follow our journey. Beta invitations will roll out here first. If you have thoughts on what would make your next clinic visit easier, reply or email us at dev@oncoly.se. To clinicians and researchers reading this: your feedback on the timeline and organiser would be invaluable.

Educational content—please follow your healthcare team’s guidance.