Jonathan Jackson, founder and CEO of ChoiceMap. (ChoiceMap Photo)

Jonathan Jackson may not be an expert in treating cancer, but he knows a lot about how people think.

In 2011, shortly after completing his master’s degree in cognitive science of religion at the Princeton Seminary, Jackson was getting ready to move away from a small New Jersey town to a big city. But he wasn’t sure where he wanted to move.

So, like any good scientist, he built an algorithm to make the choice easier. Taking into account proximity to hiking locations, family in the area, dating opportunities, and other factors, Jackson’s algorithm said Seattle was the best destination for him.

Jackson moved to Seattle shortly afterward, and five years later that side project has evolved into ChoiceMap, a decision-making app that helps patients and their physicians decide which treatment option fits best for them.

ChoiceMap, which Jackson founded in 2014 and where he now serves as CEO, just raised its first outside funds — about $100,000 from angel investor Tom Callaghan, who will also serve as an advisor to the startup. Jackson said the funds will fuel the app through growth, as well as supporting clinical trials of the app being conducted at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

ChoiceMap wasn’t always focused on medicine. It began as a way to help people make a variety of life decisions, like where to buy a house or what kind of career to pursue, Jackson said.

“While we were working on that, we were approached by physicians at several hospitals, who said, ‘hey, this can solve an even more complex known problem in medicine. It’s in all the medical literature, it’s called shared decision-making,'” Jackson said.

On the left, sample of a patient’s treatment options ranked by how they fit the patient’s preferences. On the right, the risks and rewards of their best matched option. (ChoiceMap Image)

He said some medical decisions are fairly straightforward — or, in cognitive science parlance, they are not preference-sensitive. Say I break my arm. My doctor, myself, and medical science likely all agree that the best treatment is to set the arm and keep it in a cast until it is healed. Little shared decision-making happens in an instance like this.

“At the other end of the spectrum, there are decisions where the scientific evidence doesn’t lead to a clear winner for what is the best course of action, and that is where there are usually significant trade-offs associated with each treatment decision,” Jackson said. These situations are highly preference-sensitive, and require extensive shared decision making by patients, doctors, and payers.

Jackson said these kinds of decisions are common in cancer treatment, joint replacements, and palliative care — treatment that relieves symptoms for patients with severe diseases.

In these situations, the cost of the treatment, the side effects associated with it, and its effectiveness must all be balanced to help the patient find an ideal outcome. Even if a therapy is cheap and effective, for example, a patient may not want to take it because the side effects are intolerable.

“Because of social dynamics, and financial pressures and regulatory pressures, the decisions that are made don’t always reflect the patient’s preferences,” Jackson said. “So that’s a problem we’re trying to solve.”

ChoiceMap now employs five people at its headquarters in Seattle’s Pioneer Square and draws expertise from a network of official and unofficial advisors in medical communities across the country.

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