Point, Ask, and Click — We made it easier to understand your scan

I started KAYMO to make medical imaging accessible and useful for patients.

That sentence is easy to write and easy to skim past, so it is worth saying why I think it matters — and why I think it is more than a nice idea.

Two things the research says

The first is that seeing your own imaging improves how well you feel you understand your condition. Not a vague sense of reassurance — a measurable improvement in perceived understanding. It turns out that looking at the thing being discussed helps you follow the discussion.

The second is broader. Patient engagement and health literacy are linked to better health outcomes and to lower costs for health systems. Patients who understand their own situation make better decisions, follow through more consistently, and lean less heavily on the parts of the system that are expensive.

Put those together and you get something that looks, to me, like a no-brainer. Giving patients better access to their own images should improve outcomes and reduce cost at the same time. Those two things rarely point in the same direction in healthcare.

And yet getting hold of your own scan is still a process of forms, CDs, and software written for radiologists. I have written about that before, more than once.

Access was only ever half of it

Here is the part I underestimated when I started. Access is necessary, but it is not sufficient.

You can hand someone their scan, in their browser, in 3D, for free — and they will still sit there looking at their own body with no idea what any of it is. The barrier moves. It does not disappear.

So we built the simplest thing we could think of to close that last gap.

KAYMO users can now point at anything they do not understand — in an X-ray, a CT, or an MRI — and KAYMO explains it in plain language. Not the whole image: that exact spot. It names what is there, says what it does, and admits when something is not clear.

It will not diagnose you, and it is not meant to. It is meant to get you to the point where you know what you are looking at, and can ask a better question of the person who can.

Try it on your own scan

Upload a scan at kaymo.me and look at the part you have always wondered about. Viewing your scans in 3D is free.

References

• Norris et al, 2019, 2022
• Lorig et al, 1999, 2001
• Hibbard & Greene, 2013
• Berkman et al, 2011