There are not many people who can boast to have created their own website with over 20,000 users at 17 years old.
Senior Brad Cao is the exception.
As a member of the Centennial class of ‘26, Cao has been busy this year, publishing and maintaining MyCureHope: a website with the goal of “aggregating all the accredited medical information together.”
With an expansive list of over 30,000 possible treatments, the website filters different questions a user might have surrounding their health to find solutions online and even near the individual’s location.
Cao emphasized that in creating his website, a big factor was consulting a variety of “FDA professionals and professionals from hospitals–a wide spectrum of people with a lot of specialty in this area to make sure our website is as accurate as possible.” With help from the likes of Dr. Steven Cunningham, MD of St. Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, Cao ensures that all results found on this platform will be accurate, one of two imperative goals Cao is working toward.
The other is efficiency. “Find treatment in seconds, not months,” is the website’s motto, and with its user-friendly design, one can truly find answers in an instant.
Cao noted how in the past 20 years alone, medication errors have ballooned by 300%–meaning an alarming amount of people have used and are using medicine in a potentially harmful manner. MyCureHope, through its detail, may be the way to help cut down that number.
As much emphasis in the medical field is placed on the doctors side, it can be easy to neglect the patients and their struggles. Cao is aiming to balance the field, ensuring that it is not only the professionals that receive attention.
“A lot of really smart people are working to make sure the healthcare system gets fixed,” Cao said. “But what I’m really passionate about is making sure, on the other side, patients are able to make educated decisions because as much as important as it is that doctors prescribe the right things, it’s also equally as important that patients can understand their own care.”
On a much more personal level, however, Cao described how his motivation to help patients stemmed from his experiences with medical complications with his family, particularly with his cousin’s struggle with ADHD. Being diagnosed very early on in his life, doctors advised him to take stimulants in an attempt to combat his condition. Yet unbeknownst to him, in the future there would be guidelines establishing the proper age to take these medications.
It is a fascinating project resulting from nearly two years of development, and with the number of users paired with the multitude of sources holding answers to many questions they have, Cao’s work has already had a heavy impact–and there is further hope for an even larger outreach to patients. Among the flurry of disorganization in the medical field, Cao hopes that MyCureHope could serve as one firm foundation of information for the public to rely on.
“Whether it’s my website another highly accurate source, it’s really important to be able to research your medical conditions and make educated decisions, because you only have one body, but you have an entire life, so it’s really important that we make the best out of it and care for ourselves as much as possible.”
