Sometimes great achievements can only come at the expense of other people’s realities. I have found that being a little unrealistic has helped me see beyond the limitations of those realities.
Steve Holmes
Gold Coast,
Queensland, Australia.
Kiwi-born formerly Waikanae, New Zealand
Love Road Cycling, Running, & Rugby
Generally speaking, knowledge is power, but when it comes to cancer, knowledge can become a brutal defining factor in life or death outcomes
Founder Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Australia (CCF Australia), The Main Beach Foundation (TMBF), and The Cancer Toolkit. (CTK)
I develop and implement cancer resources that help reduce unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths.
Resources that better equip and empower people, businesses, and industry ahead of or in response to unexpected cancer events.
A cancer diagnosis impacts many exponentially and is almost always unexpected, chaotic, overwhelming, and disruptive.
Business and Industry are significant community and family foundations, they are also a large demographic sleepwalking directly into a steeply rising cancer trend with limited to no awareness or response capabilities.
Our greatest threat is 
“Not knowing what you do not know.” Our greatest advantage is to begin knowing from someone who does.
These are the areas I am well equipped and qualified to help deliver material improvements toward survival outcomes.
Too many unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths due to…
- Newly diagnosed patients and caregivers not knowing what they do not know
- No clear, concise patient roadmap to guide them beyond the diagnosing physician’s office.
- Top-down information delivery of treatment options and processes is clogged, convoluted, lacking consistency, and empathy for the patient.
- Doctors, Medical Professionals, and Healthcare Providers are very often time-poor, fatigued, and subject to making mistakes like anyone else. Some are too conservative in their approach whilst others are not yet up to speed with the most up-to-date options and developments.
- Businesses, industries, and the Workplace populations are unnecessarily unaware and unprepared for an unexpected serious cancer event
Critical Distinction
- Much of what you need to know and seek answers for falls outside of our health provider’s roles and responsibilities.
We can help reduce unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths by helping people before they become patients, newly diagnosed patients, and their caregivers to help themselves by…
Pre Patient
- Equip businesses, industry, and the wider community ahead of an unexpected cancer event before people become patients.
- Awareness of a starting point – where to go and what to do if the unexpected should happen.
Newly Diagnosed
- Upskilling them to know what they must know in the order it must be known, from the point of diagnosis.
- Provide them with a clear and concise roadmap to guide them forward from the moment of diagnosis.
- Develop and implement efficient and effective top-down information delivery innovations that benefit both the health providers and patient options.
- Provide resources that better equip and empower them to navigate interactions with their Doctors, Medical Professionals, and Health Providers.
Critical Distinctions
- Cancer is almost always an unexpected and life-crippling event.
- Generally speaking, knowledge is power, but when it comes to cancer, knowledge can define life or death outcomes.
- Our greatest threat is “Not knowing what you do not know.” Our greatest resource is to begin knowing from those who do.
The Newly Diagnosed Patient & their Point of Diagnosis
The point of diagnosis forms a devastating disorientating abyss for the “Newly Diagnosed Patient & Caregiver” to cross.
- The Cancer Toolkit was specifically designed by successful patients and caregivers to bridge this deep disorientating abyss and provide the patient’s ‘Hopes & Dreams’ with the structure they need to move forward.
- A cancer diagnosis is almost always unexpected, people can not plan to avoid cancer, but they plan on how to respond should an unexpected cancer event ever occur.
The Prepatient
The Workplace populations are our fundamental community and family pillars. Currently, this demographic that we so rely on, is sleepwalking into a rising cancer trend, with no critical awareness of the looming abyss and its destructive consequences on both families and the businesses who employ them.
- Awareness of “The Cancer Toolkit” community of resources provides a significant advantage in preparing ahead for an unexpected cancer event
- The Toolkits better equip the employer in managing the impact of cancer in the workplace.
Contributing to the cancer success equation…
Just as science is discovering new medical interventional treatment breakthroughs by uncloaking and exposing cancers that learned to evade our immune system, I am also contributing to the cancer success equation by unclogging and simplifying the information conduits to the newly diagnosed patients, their supporter communities, and the unsuspecting workplace environments.
Cleaner, crisper, and up-to-date information delivery to the “Coal Face of Cancer” that better equip the newly diagnosed patient to respond and in turn, will contribute to more successful outcomes in its own right.
Just to be clear there have been considerable medical breakthroughs and much-improved knowledge on the patient pathway to best outcomes, BUT have yet to reach the majority of the newly diagnosed patients at the critical and pivotal point of diagnosis. This is something that I am well equipped to contribute.
The Cancer Toolkit initiative has been specifically designed for this challenge. An effective peer-to-peer bottom-up resource designed for the newly diagnosed patient and caregiver. A resource developed from the distilled knowledge, experiences, and wisdom of the globally connected patient and caregiver communities. Gift forward from those who know.
The Next Generation in Patient Success.
The Next Generation in patient success is coming from those who are managing to bridge the cancer knowledge abyss and increase participation in their own treatment process.
Equally Connected - Equally Responsible
More details
Business – Industry
- Consult Business – Employee/colleagues functioning workplace
- Consult Employers – Mitigate workplace disruptions and Productivity impacts
- Educate and guide Employees.
- Presentations, Workshops, and Lunchbox Discussions. (Onsite and Virtual)
- Embed and Orientate “The Cancer Toolkit” resource into the workplace.
Toolkits provide the go-to “Awareness Advantage” before an unexpected diagnosis.
Community
- Introducing the Patient Toolkit to the patients & their supporters
- Talks/discussions with the Patient and their community of supporters
- Audit results, looking for red/green flags for what may have been missed or overlooked
- Interpret and simplify current progress and results to enable understanding and new decision making
Other private services and resources in development
Important Notes
The Cancer Toolkit is a community of Toolkits specifically tailored to synchronize the effort of “the many” around the one at their center – The Patient. Newly Diagnosed Patients will always have free unrestricted access to the lite version of the “Patient Toolkit”
We cannot plan to avoid cancer, but we can plan how to respond.
Please do not hesitate to call me for a chat on how I can best help
Regards Steve
▶︎ P: +61 415 153 522
▶︎ E:Steve@steveholmes.net.au
General Experience
- I have assisted many patients and caregivers across the world to navigate and respond to a serious cancer diagnoses.
- I help businesses and industry with their understanding and implementation in supporting the patient pathway
Consulting and Engagements
- Industry, Business & Community.
- Leadership roles in developing Next Generation Precision Pathways and initiatives that better equip Patients, Communities, Industry, and Businesses ahead of or in response to a serious unexpected cancer event.
- Leadership roles in synchronizing Patients, Medical Professionals, and their related Communities with the Next Generation initiatives
- Industry, Business, and community awareness and implementations of Next Generation initiatives
- Information Development & Delivery
Patient and Industry Technology development
- Synchronized Community
- Distilling the Globally Connected Patient and Caregiver knowledge, experience, and wisdom
- Navigating Cancer
- The Patient Pathway
- Immuno-101
- Global Cancer Data Funneling, Packaging, and Delivery
- Mutational Matchmaking
Experience overview
- GI Surgery
- Clinical Trials
- Immuno-101 (Immunology /Immunotherapies)
- Global Patient Advocacy
- Global Patient and Caregiver Mentor – serious and late-stage CCA + GI patients
- Panel participant and CCA representative, including the inaugural 2022 Australian Cholangiocarcinoma Stakeholders Meeting
- Experienced in Cancer Community development and engagement, including the “Globally Connect Patient and Caregiver”
- Audit/ Review/translate NGS – Genomic Patient findings
- Review/translate Clinical trial reports, findings, and options
- Simplifications – Medical Speak to Patient Speak
CCA Experience inspired The Cancer Toolkit
Cholangiocarcinoma – (Bile Duct Cancer)
I established Cholangiocarcinoma Australia and the CCA Patient Toolkit to share with my fellow patients and their support community.
The success of the CCA patient Toolkit naturally led to the development of an all-cancer toolkit. The Cancer Toolkit as a synchronized community of toolkits that provided a checklist and roadmap that guided and equipped the patient and their community of supporters. A community on the same page, tapping the power of the many for the benefit of the one – the patient.
The Cancer Toolkit’s primary purpose is to help reduce unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths, by better equipping the newly diagnosed patient and caregiver from the moment of diagnosis.
The Cancer Toolkit content has come from my own hard-earned experiences along with the distilled knowledge, experience, and wisdom of the globally connected patient and caregiver communities. These are the people and patients at the coalface of the cancer battle who are rewriting the dire statistics that overwhelm the newly diagnosed.
Toolkits ensure that the newly diagnosed patient and caregiver know what must be done and in the order, they must be done.
My areas of experience and focus ~
- Tumor immunology,
- Clinical Trials
- The Checkpoint Pathway
- The Patient Pathway
- Bridging the abyss beyond the diagnosis
Tumor Immunology
The interaction and pathways between the immune system and tumors
Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS)
Discovering DNA & RNA sequences from biopsy tissue samples reveals the specific mutations that are driving cancer growth
The Checkpoint Pathway
Using the body’s own immune system to target & eliminate the mutations that are driving the cancer’s growth.
MMR/dMMR (d = deficient)
Mismatch Repair genes are our Body’s DNA Spell Checkers
MSI: Microsatellite Instability
Microsatellites are tracts of repetitive DNA –
Instability creates repetitive unchecked mistakes
PDL-1: Program Death Ligand 1
Checkpoint (Proteins) switch on or off an immune response
TMB – Tumour Mutational Burden
The number of mutations within a cancer growth
Medical Research meets patient research
So I am a little bit of a mix of all these things. I find myself at an intersection of topics that bring insights that can be applied to the Newly Diagnosed Patient’s ability to continue creating better quality responses to a serious cancer diagnosis.
We are also quickly improving how to translate and transition today’s best cancer knowledge & research breakthroughs into today’s Patient Choices.
In October 2016 I was diagnosed with a very terminal and seemingly unbeatable cancer diagnosis that completely derailed my life giving me just 3 to 6 months to live. There were no known survivors from a stage 4 Cholangiocarcinoma setting at that time.
Fast forward to October 2017 when I was diagnosed cancer free – NED – a full and complete response, the second ever such success via the clinical trial Keynote 158.
What happened in 2017 placed me at the center of a stunning modern-day medical breakthrough. I had unwittingly graduated with a very intimate and unique knowledge in modern medical breakthroughs and what is now possible for patient survival.
To my knowledge at the time of writing, just 3 or 4 CCA patients globally have fully responded to overcome a late-stage (stage 4) metastatic CCA cancer – I am fortunate to be one. This was also the beginning of a new challenge to communicate what I had learned to those most in need.
Patient Pathway & Navigation
My treatment pathway and experiences have been carefully recorded to contribute to the next generation of patients and patient success – the next generation patient pathway.
I am now uniquely equipped to help people “Know what must be known, in the order, it must be known from the very moment of a diagnosis and have become proficient in translating difficult medical speak into plain patient speak.
I have a comprehensive grasp of developing, building, and implementing Patient Pathways that benefit serious life-threatening GI Cancers
When it comes to cancer, do not underestimate the power of the intangible
You could say I give other people’s “Hope” a leg up by providing it with the structure and momentum it needs to move forward and find its own reality.
Your Fiction – My Reality
“Sometimes great achievements can only come at the expense of other people’s realities. I have found that being a little unrealistic has helped me see beyond the limitations of those realities.
“Cancer is harder than hard, it painfully and relentlessly exposed who I was, but it has also exposed what I was capable of. It taught me the value of self-accountability and its inescapable responsibilities, it taught me to look through the impossible to where it could be, this was a big contributor in achieving beyond what was thought possible…”
The Cancer Koolkit
The Cancer Toolkit provides the Next Generation in effective Patient Resources.
A Precision Patient Pathway Resource On-and-Offline
The Cancer Toolkit is a community of toolkits with the patient toolkit at its center.
The Patient Toolkit provides a road map and flashlight to guide the patient from the moment of diagnosis, ensuring that priority-must-do tasks are checked off in the order that they must be done.
The greatest enemy to a “Newly Diagnosed Patient” with a serious cancer is “Not knowing what you do not know.” The greatest resource is to “Begin knowing.” Just as science is helping uncloak how cancer evades our immune system, I am helping uncloak “what you do not know.”
As simple as this concept may have seemed it was very well received by the patient’s caregivers, giving rise to the need for additional toolkits, that synchronized and guided a typically unprepared and ill-equipped community of supporters.
Harnessing and synchronizing the effort of the many is a powerful X-factor resource for a patient challenged by serious cancer.
The Next Generation in patient success is coming from those who are managing to bridge the cancer knowledge abyss & as a result increase participation in their own treatment process.
So that’s what the Cancer Toolkit helps with, it bridges that knowledge abyss and empowers a community of supporters around the patient effort.
The CTK Objective
- Helping to reduce unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths, by better equipping patients ahead of or in response to a serious cancer event.
- Increasing longevity and sustainability by providing current, organized Information directly to the newly diagnosed patient at the point of diagnosis.
The CTK Mission
Awareness is the best preparedness and response resource we have against a serious cancer event.
- Insert the Patient Toolkit as an integral component at the point of diagnosis
- Insert the Community of Toolkits into the workplace to better equip employees ahead of an unexpected cancer event. This will also help employers in managing a workplace impacted by a cancer diagnosis, and mitigate workplace disruptions and productivity loss.
Toolkit Applications
- Patient
- Patients Support Community
- Oncologist & Surgeons
- Hospitals & Medical Centres Patient orientations
- Telehealth orientation outpatient services
- Telehealth delivery
- Rehabilitation and Recovery
- Employers
- EAP Services
- Health Insurers
- Retirement Villages
- Lifestyle Villages
- Government
The Main Beach Foundation
The Main Beach Foundation enables grassroots community responsibility and potential(s)
Not-for-Profit Community Organisation
themainbeachfoundation.org
Enabling Community Responsibility
Putting community responsibility back into cancer, recognising and enabling initiatives that help reduce unnecessary & avoidable cancer deaths.
Enabling Community Potential
Enable our community’s individual and collective people potential that benefit grassroots community culture, values, and evolution
An Aware Community is a Prepared Community
The real value is in an aware and prepared community, a community that knows how to respond. Fundraising and Charity efforts very often absolve and cleanse the collective conscience and overshadow the real value that the community has to offer.
Cancer is a significant and increasing disruptor in our community, so putting “community back into cancer” is to lead the response that helps reduce unnecessary and avoidable cancer deaths. My role is to develop and implement resources that better equip people, the community, and the workplace ahead of or in response to a serious cancer event, The Cancer Toolkit is a good example of this.
Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Australia
Cholangiocarcinoma, a Bile Duct Cancer
The Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation Australia provides a highly specific Patient-Up, Community, and Industry resource.
Not-for-Profit Organisation
cholangiocarcinoma.com.au
Educating Equipping and Empowering
Although we are Australian and New Zealand centric we take in the complete global view at all levels to ensure we leave no stone unturned and remain current and effective at the coalface of this cancer challenge. We are here to help support your efforts in achieving the best possible outcomes.
Hope is a significant human asset
We give your ‘hope’ the structure it needs to move forward by providing you with a roadmap and a flashlight to navigate your best pathway.
Abyss Overview
When the diagnosing physician has no option to offer other than palliative care, what happens next? typically there is nothing except the awaiting abyss of chaos and overwhelm. This is an area to which I am well equipped to contribute.
There are 2 very critical thresholds that a patient must face when confronted with a serious and life-ending cancer challenge. Bridging the Abyss and Beyond the Diagnosis. These two thresholds defeat many before they begin. Awareness is a great starting point.
Explanation.
- Bridging the Abyss – The abyss looms up large at the point of diagnosis – its vortex is as crippling as cancer itself.
- Beyond the Diagnosis – Beyond your physician’s office – what is your next step what are your options.
As any cancer patient knows – the Abyss reaches out and sucks you into its chaotic vacuum of overwhelm. To be forewarned and forearmed provides critical advantages in achieving the best possible outcomes.
Hard & Soft Resources + Private Services
Resources – Soft
- App (in dev) + Web-App: for non & Company-specific workplace environments
Resources – Hard
- Boxsets: Contains 4 items: Journal + 3 Opinion & Questions journal + Video Introduction +Video Immuno 101 tutorial + CTK App membership
- Boxset: Contains 5 items: Move lite Eat lite with Cancer Journal + Matching Patient and Caregiver Diaries + Medical Document holder + vision planner.
- Wrist Bands – Coded: Patient-specific coded with join community QR CODE to help seamlessly build a patient’s support community
- QR Coded Supporter Wearables
Resources – Private
Not available to business – Private to the patient only – not always available
- Medical Documantation Audits
- NGS – Genetic + Mutational review and interpret reports and findings
- Peer review meeting information
- Mutational Matchmaking