Meet The Cancer Experts: Dr. Philippe Bedard

Meet Dr. Philippe Bedard.

In his own words:

My name is Phil Bedard. I'm a medical oncologist at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre.

I think where the future is headed, as we generate more, sort of, big data -- in terms of large numbers of mutations or mutation patterns across cancers -- is sharing data across institutions.

I have a lot of hope that we'll be able to put these big data projects together and really have clinical translation into advances that are meaningful for patients that we can use.

I think the big thing in the clinics that we're seeing is that patients are a lot more engaged in terms of knowing about their treatment. Now patients have access to their medical records online, most of them have it on their smartphones.

I think it's a good thing for patients to have more tools and to use technology to better understand what is happening in terms of their disease, to better understand what symptoms they may be experiencing, to be better able to communicate that with their healthcare team.

Technology, like in every walk of life, is influencing medicine and cancer medicine as well. And I think there's lots of hope that things will continue to improve. But it takes time and it takes investment in research. That's really how we're going to know whether or not implementing some of these new technologies really improves patient outcomes.