What Cancer Has Taught Me About Technology, Precision and the Human Connection
A patient sat across from me recently, waiting for the results of a scan that would tell her whether months of treatment had worked. The images had already been reviewed. The reports were ready. The medical decisions were clear, yet before I spoke, there was a pause. Not because I needed more time to interpret the findings, but because she needed a moment to gather herself before hearing words that could change the course of her life. That pause captures something important about oncology today.
Over the last two decades, cancer care has undergone a remarkable transformation. The field I entered as a young surgeon is very different from the one we practise today. We now operate with greater precision, perform increasingly complex procedures through minimally invasive and robotic techniques, and offer treatments that are more personalised than ever before. Procedures such as Cytoreductive Surgery with HIPEC, advanced liver resections, and organ-preserving cancer surgeries have expanded what is possible for patients who, in an earlier era, may have had far fewer options. Technology has undoubtedly made cancer care better.
High-quality imaging allows us to understand disease extent with remarkable accuracy. Advanced pathology and molecular diagnostics help us make better treatment decisions. Robotic platforms enable surgeons to perform selected procedures with greater precision, often leading to less blood loss, smaller incisions, and faster recovery. Multidisciplinary tumour boards bring together specialists from different disciplines to ensure that every patient benefits from collective expertise.
These advances matter because they translate into better outcomes, improved quality of life, and, for many patients, more hope than ever before, but there is another side to this progress that we do not talk about often enough.
A significant part of my work involves abdominal cancers. Complex malignancies of the gastrointestinal tract, liver and peritoneal surfaces. In many of these cases, the symptoms a patient experiences rarely influence the ultimate treatment decision. Modern imaging has become so sophisticated that scans often tell us almost everything we need to know about the extent of disease, whether surgery is feasible, and what the next step should be.
From a purely technical standpoint, I could review the scans, study the reports, and arrive at a treatment plan without spending much time discussing the symptoms themselves. That is not medicine, because while the scan tells me where the tumour is, it tells me nothing about the person carrying it. What patients want is not merely a decision. They want to be heard.
Often, before we even begin discussing treatment, patients tell us about their lives. They speak about elderly parents who depend on them, children whose education they worry about, businesses they have built over decades, financial pressures, fears about the future, or simply the anxiety of not knowing what comes next.
Most of the time, they know I may not be able to solve these problems. They are not necessarily looking for answers. They are looking for acknowledgement. The patients want to know that someone is listening, that someone understands that the diagnosis affects far more than an organ or a scan report. In my experience, that part of the conversation often needs to come before the diagnosis itself.
Cancer is never experienced as a scan, a pathology report, or a surgical procedure. It is experienced as fear, uncertainty, vulnerability, and a disruption of everyday life.
Patients rarely remember the technical details of a treatment plan years later. What they remember is how they felt when they first heard the diagnosis. They remember who sat beside them during difficult conversations. They remember whether their questions were answered and whether someone took the time to understand their concerns. That is why I believe technology and compassion are not competing forces in medicine. They are complementary ones.
The purpose of innovation is not to replace the human element of care. It is to strengthen it. When better imaging helps us reach decisions faster, we should use that advantage to spend more meaningful time with patients. When surgical technology improves precision, it should allow us to focus not only on removing disease but also on preserving function, dignity, and quality of life. When systems become more efficient, the ultimate beneficiary should be the patient sitting in front of us.
As surgeons, we often speak about outcomes in terms of survival, recurrence rates, or complication rates. These metrics are essential. Patients evaluate their journey differently. They measure it through trust, reassurance, communication, and the confidence that they are not facing their illness alone.
The future of oncology will undoubtedly bring newer technologies, better diagnostics, and more sophisticated treatments. I welcome that future, but the most important lesson cancer has taught me is that progress should never come at the expense of presence.
The best cancer care is not technology versus compassion. It is technology guided by compassion, because no matter how advanced medicine becomes, every patient still needs what they have always needed: expertise they can trust, and a doctor who sees not just the disease, but the person living through it.
