What is the Oncera Health Index?
The Oncera Health Index (OHI) is a self-reported tracking score that summarizes how a cancer survivor is doing across the seven domains of survivorship.
The Oncera Health Index gives one plain-language read on how survivorship is going overall, in a single summary score that is easy to glance at and easy to discuss. The point of the Oncera Health Index is not precision about any one symptom, but a clearer view of the whole picture over time.
What does the Oncera Health Index summarize?
The Oncera Health Index summarizes how a survivor is doing across the seven domains of survivorship: Physical Health, Emotional Wellbeing, Sleep, Nutrition, Hormone Therapy, Alcohol & Nicotine, and Environmental Health. Each domain covers a different part of life after cancer, and together they describe the whole person rather than a single symptom or scan.
Because the Oncera Health Index draws from all seven domains, it reflects how these areas move together. Poor sleep can deepen fatigue; emotional stress can disrupt both sleep and appetite. The OHI is designed to make those relationships visible in one place, so you can see patterns instead of tracking one symptom at a time.
Why does the Oncera Health Index exist?
The Oncera Health Index exists because survivorship is easy to lose track of. After treatment ends, survivors often carry a vague sense that something has shifted without a simple way to describe it, and short follow-up visits leave little time to reconstruct months of scattered notes. A single, self-reported summary gives survivors a steadier way to notice change and a clearer starting point for the conversations that matter.
The Oncera Health Index also reduces the mental load of managing life after cancer. Instead of holding dozens of separate worries in mind, a survivor has one organized read they can watch over weeks and months, and a set of questions they can bring to survivorship appointments.
What the Oncera Health Index is not
The Oncera Health Index is not a diagnosis, a clinical assessment, or a medical measurement. It is a self-reported tracking score built entirely from what a survivor reports about themselves, and it does not detect disease, predict recurrence, or replace any test or judgment from a care team. Oncera is educational and non-diagnostic by design.
The Oncera Health Index is also proprietary to Oncera and is not a validated clinical instrument. It should not be read as, or compared to, validated patient-reported outcome measures such as PROMIS or FACT, which are developed and tested through clinical research. For how those validated measures differ, see our guide to survivorship questionnaires, and for how Oncera approaches evidence more broadly, see our research overview.
How should you read your Oncera Health Index over time?
The Oncera Health Index is most useful read as a trend rather than a single number. The score updates once a week and only when there has been enough activity that week for the change to mean something. A long stretch with no movement in the score is worth noticing, and worth raising with your care team if it matches how you are feeling.
How the Oncera Health Index moves varies from person to person, depending on cancer type, treatment, and circumstances, so the most helpful comparison is with your own earlier scores rather than with anyone else. Read that way, the OHI becomes a quiet record of recovery and a prompt for better questions, never a verdict about your health.