A conversation with Sanjay Juneja, MD — The Onc Doc, VP of AI & Medical Informatics at Tempest, Co-founder of TensorBlack
Cancer care is continuous. The current system often treats it like it isn’t.
In this episode of Targeted Oncology’s Treating Together podcast, Dr. Pallav Mehta sits down with Dr. Sanjay Juneja — oncologist, medical informatics leader, and one of oncology’s most-followed voices on social media — to explore the intersection of AI, patient information, and virtual care.
The conversation covers the shift from information scarcity to information overload, the structural limitations of the 15-minute visit, and why continuous monitoring between clinic appointments may be the most important clinical gap in oncology today.
“Cancer treatment is continuous. Living with cancer treatment is continuous. Fighting cancer is continuous. But right now without these things, it’s a very isolated, point-to-point interaction.”
— Sanjay Juneja, MD, The Onc Doc
What this episode covers
From information scarcity to information overload A decade ago, patients struggled to find reliable cancer information. Today the challenge has reversed — patients arrive at appointments having consumed enormous volumes of content that may or may not apply to their specific diagnosis, stage, or biology. The new clinical skill is navigation, not just explanation.
The structural problem with point-to-point care Two 15-minute visits three to four weeks apart were never designed to manage the complexity of modern cancer treatment. Patients are expected to track symptoms, remember concerns, and make high-stakes decisions in a window that was built for a simpler era of oncology. Virtual care isn’t a supplement to that model — it’s a structural correction.
The subtle toxicity problem Grade 1 and 2 side effects build gradually and are routinely missed between visits. Catching them early — before a patient has to stop a therapy that’s working — requires continuous monitoring. Waiting for the next appointment is not a clinical strategy.
What AI can and can’t replace AI can surface data, identify patterns, and flag symptoms. What it cannot replicate is helping a patient weigh the emotional weight of a difficult treatment decision — the fear of a side effect against the regret of stopping. That remains the domain of the clinician. The best care models use AI to handle the signal and humans to handle the conversation.
Social media as clinical infrastructure Dr. Juneja argues that evergreen video content — what he calls a “digital smart phrase” — allows oncologists to reinforce complex explanations patients couldn’t absorb in a single visit. Building a library of patient-facing educational content isn’t just a marketing exercise. It’s a clinical tool.
About the guests
Pallav Mehta, MD — Host Dr. Mehta is a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer and the Medical Director of Reimagine Care. He practices at MD Anderson Cancer Center at Cooper and serves as an assistant professor of medicine at Cooper Medical School. He brings nearly 20 years of clinical experience to his work at the intersection of oncology and virtual care.
Sanjay Juneja, MD — Guest Dr. Juneja is a medical oncologist and hematologist practicing in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Vice President of AI and Medical Informatics at Tempest. He is the co-founder of TensorBlack and the creator of The Onc Doc — a social media platform with over 5 million downloads across 110 countries dedicated to democratizing cancer information for patients and families. His work sits at the intersection of clinical oncology, AI, and patient communication.
How Reimagine Care addresses the gap between visits
The problem Dr. Juneja and Dr. Mehta describe — a system that is continuous in its clinical demands but episodic in its support — is the gap Reimagine Care was built to close.
Our virtual care platform extends oncology teams beyond the clinic walls, providing patients with continuous support throughout treatment — not just at the next appointment.
What we provide:
- 24/7 access to oncology-trained clinicians via text, phone, and video
- AI-assisted symptom triage through Remi, our oncology-native virtual assistant
- Automated patient check-ins that catch grade 1 and 2 toxicities before they escalate
- Connected device monitoring — temperature, blood pressure, pulse oximetry
- Caregiver engagement and patient education between visits
- Real-time clinical dashboards so care teams always know what’s happening with their patients
Across 10,000+ patients served and 250,000+ interactions, we’ve seen what’s possible when cancer care stops being point-to-point.
If extending care beyond the clinic is on your roadmap, let’s talk.
Whether you’re looking to reduce avoidable ED utilization, improve patient experience between visits, or extend your clinical team’s capacity — we’d welcome the conversation.
More from the Treating Together series
This is part of a four-part series featuring Dr. Pallav Mehta on Targeted Oncology’s Treating Together podcast.
- Part 1: Community Oncology at a Crossroads — with Debra Patt, MD
- Part 2: Precision Hope: The New Frontier of AI-Driven Oncology — with Douglas Flora, MD
- Part 3: Beyond the Hospital Walls — with Jorge Garcia, PharmD
- Part 4: Leveraging AI, Social Media, and Virtual Care (you are here)