A diagnosis lands on a Tuesday afternoon and the questions arrive at eleven that night, when the clinic is closed and the pamphlet is in a drawer somewhere. FRANSiS™ gives your program an always open text line that answers from your own education materials.
The trifolds, the education packets, the curated links, the phone number for the navigator: all of it is real and all of it matters. But none of it is what a person reaches for at eleven at night. What they reach for is the phone in their hand.
Roughly half of what a cancer patient support line receives arrives outside business hours. Late night contact is not an anomaly to be smoothed out of the data. It is a steady, week over week feature of how people living with cancer behave.
When a national cancer organization opened a text line for patients and caregivers, the questions were not logistical. Conversation themes from one live deployment:
Weighing options, second opinions, and what a recommendation actually means.
What is normal, what is not, and when to call someone.
A number on a portal at nine at night with no one to explain it.
Navigating later stage care, logistics, and what comes next.
Eligibility, timing, and what a screening visit involves.
Every one of these is a question about understanding. A notification cannot answer any of them.
It is an adult child in another time zone trying to understand what the next few weeks look like. They will not call the office the next morning. They are not sure the question is big enough, and they are not the patient, so they are not certain they are allowed to ask.
Text is the channel people use when they are not sure they are allowed to ask.
The AI Powered Helper answers from your organization’s own materials, within your guidelines, and hands off to a person when a question needs one. It extends the navigators, social workers, and educators you already have. It does not replace them, and it does not give medical advice.
A question at eleven does not wait until nine the next morning.
A typical exchange runs nine or ten messages deep, not a single alert.
People reach in from well beyond the region you were built to serve.
Family members are a large share of contact, along with clinicians and navigators.
HIPAA compliance supported with a signed BAA included, TCPA consent and opt out handled.
Works on any mobile phone without an app, an account, or an internet connection.
ZERO Prostate Cancer built ZACH, which stands for ZERO’s Access to Community Health, on the FRANSiS™ platform. It is a cornerstone of the organization’s Blitz the Barriers initiative.
People reach it by texting 1-844-660-9376 or through zerocancer.org/text, with no smartphone, app, account, or internet connection needed.
It serves at risk men, patients and survivors, caregivers, partners and family, clinicians, patient navigators, and advocates.
Available in multiple languages and reading levels, which matters when the material is clinical.
ZACH is an informational support tool and does not provide medical advice. Program details are drawn from ZERO Prostate Cancer’s public announcement.
HIPAA compliance is supported, with a signed business associate agreement included as standard. Consent, quiet hours, and opt out handling follow TCPA requirements, and carrier registration is managed for you. Data is encrypted in transit with TLS 1.3 and at rest with 256 bit AES.
More detail: HIPAA compliant text messaging and SMS compliance requirements.
No. In live oncology deployments the conversation volume goes to treatment decision making, side effect management, making sense of test results, and navigating advanced disease. A reminder cannot answer any of those.
No. It answers from your organization’s own approved materials and within your guidelines, and hands off to a person when a question needs one. It is informational support, not medical advice.
Texting can be used in a HIPAA compliant program when the right safeguards and agreements are in place. FRANSiS supports HIPAA compliance and includes a signed business associate agreement as standard.
No. Text messaging works on any mobile phone without an app, an account, or an internet connection, which is why it reaches people that portals and apps miss.
Caregivers, partners, and family members are a large share of contact, along with clinicians and patient navigators who need a quick answer between appointments.
Your existing education materials, a phone number, and consent and opt out handling that follows TCPA requirements. Carrier registration is managed for you.
Yes. Programs commonly run in more than one language and at more than one reading level, which matters when the material is clinical.
We will walk through what an always open text line looks like for your program, using your own education materials.
