Insights Forum
Founded in 2020, the Ellison Insights Forum is a conversational platform where leading health and scientific experts share ideas on complex challenges in cancer research and treatment, with the ultimate goal of improving patient outcomes. Sessions focus on innovative thinking and transformative opportunities, encouraging open discussion and collaboration for patient benefit.
Stay tuned for the announcement of our next Insights Forum!
Past insights forums
2025
OCTOBER 2025
Real-World Evidence and AI in Cancer Research
Doctors and researchers are using AI and patient data from everyday care in new ways. Could these breakthroughs help us detect cancer earlier and improve survival in the next 3–5 years?
JUNE 2025
Rethinking Cancer: New Frameworks, New Frontiers
Our panel of experts discuss how patients, advocates, and oncologists can collaborate to boost awareness and improve accessibility to cutting-edge cancer care.
2024
SEPTEMBER 2024
Application of AI in Cancer Outcomes
Our panel of experts revisit AI’s evolving role in cancer care. Why isn’t it delivering better patient diagnostics and treatments as expected? What’s holding it back, and how can we fix it?
JUNE 2024
You Have Cancer, What’s Next?
As a physician (oncologist), what would you do – and as a patient, what should you do – to ensure you are delivering/receiving the best care for this/your specific cancer? Our panel of experts discuss how patients, advocates, and oncologists can collaborate to boost awareness and improve accessibility to cutting-edge cancer care.
FEBRUARY 2024
What Advanced Technologies Will Revolutionize Medical Research and Care — and Why?
Our panel of experts consider which advanced technologies have the potential to revolutionize the treatment and prevention of cancer and other complex diseases.
2023
AUGUST 2023
Is Cancer a Disease of Dysfunctional Communication and Dysregulated Information?
Our panel of experts envision a future in which information theory is more broadly adopted in cancer research and consider the intriguing idea that cancer is, in reality, a disease of dysregulated information and dysfunctional communication.
JUNE 2023
Will AI Revolutionize Cancer Treatment, Diagnosis, and Prevention?
Our experts explore the state of numerous efforts to apply AI to cancer, what to expect in terms of potential advances (or not) during the next decade and beyond, and what we should fear, if anything.
FEBRUARY 2023
Progress Against the Most Lethal Cancers
Why are improvements in survival not occurring in some of the most lethal cancers? Are advances in the molecular sciences and approaches, such as immunotherapy, that are driving precision medicine impacting death rates in metastatic cancers?
2022
DECEMBER 2022
Is Immunotherapy the Long-Sought Panacea for Cancer?
If cancer immunotherapy is the answer to improving treatment or even curing or preventing most cancers, what are the research imperatives at this point? Are we doing enough to address these imperatives? If not, why not, and how can that be remedied?
SEPTEMBER 2022
What Are We Missing in Our 50-Year Quest to Fundamentally Understand and Control Cancer?
Cancer is a complex adaptive system, but is it irreducibly complex? If not, what are we missing that could enable progress? Our panel of experts explore this question and provide their insights on what we have yet to understand about this disease.
MAY 2022
Precision Oncology: Separating Hope from Hype
Where, how, and why is precision oncology working predictably and well? Where and why is precision oncology not working well – or at all? What is needed for all cancer patients to have access to efficacious precision oncology in the future?
FEBRUARY 2022
Early Cancer Detection and Prevention: The New Frontier
Are we on the cusp of a revolution in cancer? Is early detection of cancer the new frontier in cancer progression – or not? If so, what will be required to achieve needed changes in all sectors? Could the very early detection of pre-cancer “signals” create unprecedented challenges?
2021
OCTOBER 2021
Information Theory
If cancer is a dynamic information-driven complex adaptive system, what steps must be taken to shift from studying its “parts” vs. decoding and decrypting the information we need to identify and understand the flow of information and the logic of the system?
JULY 2021
The Physics of Cancer
In the context of the convergence of the physical sciences with cancer biology, is research in the physical sciences clinically relevant? What will it take to advance promising areas of the physical sciences to solve critical questions in cancer that could lead to clinical breakthroughs?
MAY 2021
Deconvoluting Cancer Complexity: Data vs. Information
We are awash in data from cancer patients, but if data is not information, what and where is dysregulated cancer information, how do we collect it, and is it critical for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer?
MARCH 2021
Revolutionizing Cancer Treatment through Evolutionary Theory
How could applying specific principles of evolution / evolutionary theory (and ecology) across biological and temporal scales of cancer revolutionize treatment strategies, reduce resistance, and improve patient outcomes?
JANUARY 2021
Precision Medicine for COVID-19
Can we use the precision cancer medicine model to inform and improve the diagnosis and prevention of COVID-19 infections and treatment of the disease(s) it causes?