A breast cancer support app for life after treatment
A UK breast cancer charity’s app for anyone living with or beyond primary breast cancer, in the months and years after hospital treatment ends. I worked on it until it closed, and helped close it down.
The gap after treatment
When treatment for primary breast cancer ends, regular hospital contact ends with it. Many people still live with side effects, have questions about exercise and diet, and worry about the cancer coming back, with far fewer people around to ask.
A UK breast cancer charity built an app for that period. More than 40 women who had been through treatment volunteered as digital champions and shaped it through research and interviews.
What the app did
The app held short cards of practical advice, each linked to fuller information from trusted sources, alongside real stories from people who had been through treatment.
It was well received from the start, and went on to win a national award.
300+ cards
of practical advice on side effects, exercise, diet and wellbeing.
- 8,500+ users within a year of launch
- 4.9 stars in the app stores
My role
I joined the team that built and ran the app after its launch and stayed with it to the end, working across all of it with the rest of the team: the app itself, the backend and API, and the content management system.
The charity’s team wrote and managed the cards. Our job was to give them a content system they could run themselves, so advice could be added, updated or retired without waiting for an app release.
Keeping it running
An app people rely on for health information has to keep working as phones change around it. Each year brought new iOS and Android versions, app store rule changes and SDK upgrades that had to land before their deadlines.
Alongside those came accessibility fixes and a steady flow of content changes from the charity.
Closing it down
Over time, fewer people used the app. People had started finding health information through quick searches and AI assistants, and a standalone app was no longer the best way to reach them. The charity closed it on 3 February 2026 and moved its effort into its website, helpline, forum and support groups.
I helped carry out the closure, from telling users what was changing to taking the app out of the stores.
How it was built
The app’s screens were served by a Ruby on Rails application inside native iOS and Android apps. That let one small team ship changes to both platforms at once, and let new content appear without a store update. The same Rails application also ran the API and the tools the charity’s team used to edit cards.
Built with: Ruby on Rails, iOS, Android.
Building something people lean on in a hard moment?
Tell me what it does, who relies on it and what keeps you up at night about it. A few lines by email is enough. I reply within two working days.