Supportive care is the part of cancer treatment that doesn't make headlines. While new therapies command attention, the symptoms patients live with day to day, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, the slow erosion of quality of life, are still under-addressed in the UK. Chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting in particular continues to derail treatment, push patients out of work and disrupt families, despite clear evidence that it can be prevented and managed well.

Chugai Pharma UK has been working to change that. As part of their Principles of Care initiative, they wanted to bring together UK clinicians, pharmacists and patients with lived experience to set out what excellent supportive care actually looks like in practice. They needed a long-form channel that could carry expert conversations with clinical credibility, hold space for patient stories, and reach the multidisciplinary teams responsible for delivering care across NHS trusts. They came to SomX to design and produce it.

Concept, format and series architecture

We developed The Cancer Care Compass Podcast as a video-first series across six episodes, with the sixth episode released as a two-part special. Each episode pairs Michal Sladkowski, Advanced Oncology Pharmacist and series host, with a different guest configuration: oncology academics, multidisciplinary teams from MASCC-accredited centres of excellence, patients living with cancer, and the clinicians leading the field. The structure lets the series move from foundational definitions of supportive care, through the Principles of Care framework, into individual patient stories and finally into operational blueprints for trusts that want to build their own services.

Pre-production and brief

Each episode required careful planning with Chugai's medical, marketing and compliance teams. We worked through guest preparation, question routing, and the regulatory declarations required for pharma-funded educational content. Episodes were scripted around a clear editorial spine so the audio worked as standalone listening while the video carried the visual storytelling.

Filming, editing and design

We produced each episode as a multi-speaker video podcast, with bespoke title cards, lower thirds and chapter design treating each conversation as a distinct piece. Editing was tight: episodes range from 22 to 39 minutes, cut for clarity and pace, with full captions on every release for accessibility. Where guests appeared remotely, we built around that without losing the warmth of the in-person conversations.

Trailers and supporting content

Every episode launches alongside a short-form trailer designed to travel on social and email. We produced these as a separate edit stream rather than auto-cut clips, so the trailer has its own narrative beat and pulls the strongest moment from each conversation.

Handling a dedication with care

Episode five featured Anna Banian, who shared her experience of living with cancer and undergoing chemotherapy. Anna passed away before the episode was released. We worked with the Chugai team to add a dedication to Anna and her family into the closing moments of the episode, a quiet, considered piece of editorial that mattered to everyone involved.