About

What this is

Patient Guide is a free tool that helps patients and family caregivers understand their health in plain language — whatever the condition. Cancer, heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease, stroke, Parkinson's, COPD, inflammatory bowel disease, long COVID, chronic pain, or a diagnosis nobody has explained to you yet.

The idea is simple: your doctors have access to clinical guidelines, the published research on PubMed, and the clinical trial registry. You have access to exactly the same public sources — but they are written for clinicians. This tool puts an AI layer in between that searches those sources and translates what it finds into your language, at a reading level anyone can follow, with a link to every claim so you can check it.

How it decides who answers

You ask a question in your own words. A triage step reads it and brings in only the helpers who are actually relevant — usually one, sometimes a small team of three or four. A question about salt in heart failure goes to the dietitian. "I was just diagnosed and I'm overwhelmed" brings in several. The helpers available are:

• Medical Research — explains conditions, tests, treatments, and what the published evidence actually shows (including how strong it is)
• Physiotherapist — rehab, pain, balance, walking, recovery after surgery or stroke
• Exercise & Activity — getting fitter safely with a long-term condition
• Dietitian — food, salt, fluid, carbohydrates, appetite, eating through side effects
• Speech & Swallowing — swallowing trouble, voice, speech, language
• Emotional Wellbeing — distress, anxiety, low mood, sleep, coping, caregiver strain
• Clinical Trials — searches ClinicalTrials.gov for open studies you could ask your specialist about
• Patient Navigator — money, insurance, transport, work rights, benefits, home help, in your country
• Stories from Others — first-person accounts from people who've been through something similar

Whatever the helpers write then goes through two more passes: one that makes sure every organization is named in plain English (so "NICE" becomes "NICE, the body that writes treatment guidance for the UK's health service"), and one that rewrites the whole thing at a plainer reading level. That last pass is checked mechanically — if it drops a number, a dose, or a source, the original is kept instead. Vague advice is not the goal; specific, checkable advice is.

What this is not

This is not medical advice. It does not diagnose you, recommend treatments, prescribe anything, or replace your care team. It is general information from public sources, written in plain language.

It cannot tell you whether you qualify for a clinical trial or a financial-assistance program — only that one exists and is worth asking about. It cannot interpret your specific scan or blood result. We do not have access to your medical records and we do not know your full situation. Your care team does.

If you describe something urgent — chest pain, trouble breathing, signs of a stroke, a fever while on treatment that weakens your immune system, thoughts of harming yourself — the tool will tell you to get help immediately instead of researching it. Please listen to that.

Where the information comes from

The helpers are restricted to a curated allowlist of trusted sources and are not allowed to answer from the AI model's own memory. Every clinical claim has to carry a citation to something that was actually retrieved. Sources include:

• Government and public-service patient information: MedlinePlus (US National Library of Medicine), the NHS, CDC, NIH, WHO, NICE, healthdirect Australia
• Condition-specific patient organizations: the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the National Kidney Foundation, the American Lung Association, the Alzheimer's Association, the Parkinson's Foundation, Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, the American Cancer Society, Cancer.Net (ASCO), Macmillan Cancer Support, and others
• Peer-reviewed medical literature via PubMed, Europe PMC, and Semantic Scholar
• ClinicalTrials.gov, the U.S. government's public registry of clinical trials
• Professional bodies: APTA, ASHA, RCSLT, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, ESPEN, ACSM, AOSW
• Major academic medical centers' patient pages: Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, MSK, MD Anderson, Dana-Farber
• Patient-voice archives for the stories helper, anchored on Healthtalk, a UK research archive of recorded real-patient experiences across more than 100 conditions

Citations in your answer link to the actual source so you can read the original. Hover any [1] to see what it says in plain English.

Where this came from

It began as a patient-facing companion to a research tool called the AI Tumor Board, built for clinicians, and now covers all conditions rather than cancer alone.

If you are in crisis

If you are thinking about hurting yourself or are in immediate danger, please call your local emergency number or contact a crisis line:

• United States: 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline)
• United Kingdom: 116 123 (Samaritans)
• Canada: 988 (Suicide Crisis Helpline)
• Australia: 13 11 14 (Lifeline)
• Other countries: findahelpline.com