Silver
Evolution
Product Innovation

One in five cancer patients don’t die from cancer, they die from malnutrition.

Cancer treatment often leads to severe nausea and throat and mouth ulcers, making eating extremely painful. These treatments alter patients' sense of smell and taste, making them highly sensitive to the taste, smell and texture of supplements. Proper nutrition is essential for effective cancer treatment, yet meal replacement options often taste like medicine rather than food.

Consequently, 80% of these supplements are discarded, leaving patients without the nutrition they need.

Many patients resort to commercial ice creams as something they can eat comfortably. But these are just empty calories.

The status quo fails both patients and healthcare systems. In the UK, where funding exists for treatments (a single dose of the combination therapy pertuzumab and trastuzumab for breast cancer costs the NHS £1,604) there are serious spending constraints for provision of patient nutrition with only £4.56 available per hospital in-patient meal (to cover food, staff and overhead costs).

With wasted cancer supplements come malnourished patients. Along with poorer healthcare outcomes, malnourished patients also require more hospital care. Solving the malnutrition challenge could see a 20% reduction in hospital admissions for patients with cancer and a reduction in average hospital stay of 2 days. This hospitalization is expensive for healthcare systems and an unwanted disruption for patients.

One in five cancer patients don’t die from cancer, they die from malnutrition.

Traditional supplements are frequently discarded due to taste and texture sensitivities caused by treatment, ice cream remains one of the few food’s patients can tolerate, yet it lacks nutritional value.

Fuelled by Nutri-Ice, Creamotherapy has been developed and launched to meet the nutritional need in oncology; providing real nutrition in a format that works for patients with cancer and elevating the nutrition as part of treatment.

Creamotherapy redefines the design of cancer supplements by creating a product that looks, tastes, and smells just like ice cream – yet is scientifically formulated with patented micro-encapsulated nutrients to support patients fighting cancer. Every detail was considered, from reducing volumes to make it more manageable, to engineering a texture that stays frozen for 60 minutes at a patient’s bedside.

Touchpoints were carefully chosen to reach healthcare professionals and patients, including trial packs distributed through oncology units, GP surgeries, and specialist dieticians. Supporting materials – white papers, digital campaigns, and an HCP educational website – maintained a clean, human-centred visual language, balancing warmth with medical rigour.

For many cancer patients, treatment doesn’t just bring physical pain—it quietly strips away life’s simple joys. Eating, once a source of comfort and connection, becomes difficult or even distressing. The artificial taste of traditional supplements often adds insult to injury, turning nourishment into yet another battle.

Creamotherapy was designed to restore joy where it’s most needed. By transforming ice cream – a food patients still crave – into a nutrient-rich supplement, we reimagined nutrition as something to be enjoyed, not endured. Using patented micro-encapsulated technology, we deliver essential vitamins and minerals without changing the taste, smell or texture.

It’s a small comfort with a big impact: a product that has started a movement to bring pleasure back to eating and sense of self back during treatment. Because if nutrients are the stuff of life, getting them should feel like living – not just surviving.

Our objective was to change physician behaviour to provide cancer patients with the nutrition they need and, to raise awareness of the shocking threat of malnutrition for cancer patients. These nutrition challenges are healthcare system-wide and healthcare professionals are key.

We have driven clinical behaviour change by providing scientific reassurance and HCP educational materials, encouraging an understanding of the importance and ability to impact patient nutrition.

Over ten hospitals have launched the initiative, with a 400% increase in patient adherence and an average of over 1,000 extra calories consumed per patient. This increased nutrition can reduce hospital stays by over two days per visit, lower post-operative complications by up to 50%, and increase overall survival probability. This has the potential to save the NHS £480 million and prevent 2 million deaths from malnutrition globally each year.

Creamotherapy has helped Nutri-ice become the first frozen oral supplement to gain prescription status.