Teva has launched an online cancer portal that aims to help patients and carers connect with an online support community and learn more about their condition.

The debut of My Day follows a Teva-sponsored social media listening project that identified differences in the way that men and women talk about cancer online.

The firm said its new portal was named to reflect “the unique journey each cancer patient experiences” and that it would be guided by an independent, medical advisory board.

Dr Susanne West, senior director, head of customer and patient insight at Teva Pharmaceuticals Europe, said: “We know cancer isn't one disease, but rather, a number of diseases. And we see from our social listening research that across different types of cancer, patients and their caregivers are having very different cancer conversations. 

“So online cancer resources - like My Day - need to account for this, especially as patients increasingly go online to complement their in-person consultations with their physician.”

The social media listening research found male prostate cancer patients tended to focus on 'technical details', while female breast cancer patients made greater use of 'emotional' language.

The study also found that women with breast cancer, though seemingly more actively talking online about their cancer, received significantly less online support than men with prostate cancer.

The Teva-sponsored research was carried out by healthcare data firm Treato, which identified 21,030 online posts from 2013 to 2016 covering breast, lung, lymphoma and prostate cancer. For breast cancer, its analysts identified 7,826 posts from online forums such as breastcancercare.org.uk and for prostate cancer 2,989 posts were identified from the likes of patient.info.

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