Cancer E-Clinic : One Founder’s Mission to Redefine Cancer Care Through Compassion and Healing

What if cancer’s most overlooked effect isn’t physical but emotional?‍

Wandalyn Tan-Calupig learnt this the day her mother’s diagnosed anxiety went untreated in a hospital where she was admitted with Stage 4 lung cancer in 2024. But the same anxiety that left her mother rushing to the ER was reassured only as something to “address later”. The eventual death of her mother led her to a gap she couldn’t ignore. She says:

‍“Hospitals treat the physical symptoms, but the emotional emergencies happening in real time are often neglected.”

So Wanda set out to build what the system lacked. A space where emotional suffering is treated with urgency, where integrative care isn’t optional, and where healing begins with the heart.

‍This became Cancer E-Clinic: a Dubai-based digital health platform designed to support cancer patients and caregivers globally through emotional guidance, integrative healing, and 24/7 support powered by both AI and humans.

The Hidden Side of Cancer Care

Wanda first noticed the emotional side of cancer in 2016, when a close friend lost her mother and returned to work within a week. The result? She got emotionally paralysed for months. Years later, her family experienced the same emotional neglect, with no structured support.

With all these events combined, Wanda had an epiphany: ‍

“While machines monitored vitals, no one monitored emotional vitals. Not hers, not ours.”‍

This turned her personal mission into a movement: cancer care needed to evolve into a holistic digital platform for patients, caregivers, and families.

The Turning Point of When a Mission Became a Digital Health Platform

In 2024, Wanda built Cancer E-Clinic in Dubai with one clear North Star vision: heal the emotional side of cancer.

The mission? She wanted families to move from panic to peace using supportive AI, integrative healing, and human connection. The turning point that led her to build the digital platform came when a survivor’s experience made her realise that emotional readiness is often missing from cancer treatment.

She designed the platform with a simple philosophy: compassion first, technology second. Wanda says:‍

“Every supportive AI tool is measured against one question: Does this feel human, safe, and kind?”

Redefining Cancer Care & Emotional Support Through Tech

At the core of Cancer E-Clinic is The Wanda Method, a five-step healing journey (Withstand, Anchor, Navigate, Discover, and Allow) translated into platform technology.

A platform for direction, safety, and support

To solve the emotional overwhelm, medical ambiguity and decision-making stress, Cancer E-Clinic’s current phase includes matching users with the right coaches and support systems. The platform’s future roadmap involves smart oncology navigation, hospital and specialist matching, and integrated pathways.

A safe community to feel belonging

Fear, shame, and uncertainty often isolate patients even when they have family with them. Cancer E-Clinic created a psychologically safe community through moderated discussions, anonymity options, and survivor mentor-led support that encourages confidence and connection.

AI as an emotional support companion

Through a hybrid support model, an AI Cancer Care Assistant offers daily emotional check-ins and ongoing conversation. Grace AI identifies distress patterns and connects users to human coaches, survivor mentors, or community support when needed.

Supporting caregivers that hold everyone together

Through her experiences, Wanda saw how today’s caregiver could become tomorrow’s patient if there’s zero intervention. So, the platform’s caregiver model includes counselling, support groups, telehealth, crisis support, and wellness programmes.

Integrative healing methods

Combining medical and complementary healing practices like yoga, nutrition, and meditation can help build the emotional resilience to withstand treatment, make decisions, and cope with fear.

Building Trust Before Releasing The Platform

Cancer E-Clinic is still in the process of building their platform and officially onboarding users, but the community hasn’t waited; it’s already growing around real stories. Instead of rushing to market with features, Wanda chose to build trust first through the Cancer Conversations Podcast, where survivors, doctors, and experts didn’t hesitate to join saying it was “a conversation the world was waiting for”.

During her mother’s journey, the podcast was key to finding comfort, clarity, and strength by learning from experts together, as they couldn’t receive it from medical consultations alone. Wanda said:

“If these conversations were helping us, they could help millions of families too.”‍

Today, each episode attracts 100 to 500 leads where people are finding a space where fears are understood and healing is seen as part of the journey. Storytelling, education, and trust become the strategy, not promotion.

Growth, Challenges & Building With Intention

“People began messaging me saying they wanted to join the mission, needed emotional support, or were looking for a safe space to talk about their fears, grief, or caregiving struggles,” Wanda says.

During this traction, Wanda faced two specific hurdles:

Understanding where to begin. Rather than rushing into the complexities of medical business licensing, Wanda wanted to fully understand what could be offered at every stage in a compliant manner. As a result, she strategically launched with only what is permissible without clinical regulation and what people needed the most:

‍emotional wellness coaching, grief support, and community conversations.

Meanwhile, strict frameworks for confidentiality, encryption and ethical and emotional-risk protocols were built early to protect users long before any medical features went live.

Then, she had to step back to cope with her grief, writing Heal Now: How to Move From Grief to Grace before returning with stronger structure and clearer guidance. And in a city like Dubai that’s built for rapid growth, Meydan Free Zone helps founders like Wanda clear the obstacles that slow startups, enabling them to launch and scale with clarity from day one.

Looking Ahead

Cancer E-Clinic’s future continues to be shaped by Dubai’s digital health and startup ecosystem, where founders like Wanda get exposed to how innovation, healthcare, tech, AI, and multicultural compassion intertwine, supported by hubs like Meydan Free Zone that let founders scale with speed.

Over the next five years, Cancer E-Clinic aims to support 1 million families and establish Grace AI as a global benchmark for compassionate cancer care. And for Wanda, none of this would’ve been possible without her journey. “Start with the pain you understand and ask how you can help others experiencing the same. Building from your own lived experience creates a purpose that fuels you on the hardest days and inspires others on theirs,” she says.