Why I Built Parkinson's Pathways

My dad's journey with Parkinson's has, thankfully, been a slow one.

That's not something everyone with this disease gets to say, and we don't take it for granted. What it has given us is time. Time to have real conversations, to process things together, and to figure out how to navigate a disease that nobody really prepares you for.

Early on, my dad did what a lot of people do when they get an intense diagnosis like this one: he started reading everything he could find. Research papers, treatment updates, forums, news articles. And somewhere in that process, he stumbled onto clinical trials. In the trials he found hope.

He saw how many trials were out there. How many researchers were working on this. How much effort the medical community was putting into finding better treatments, and eventually a cure. For him, just knowing that was happening was meaningful.

He worked with his doctor, found a trial he qualified for, and enrolled. It gave him a sense of agency at a time when Parkinson's can make you feel like you have none. It gave our whole family something to hold onto.

But understanding those trials was genuinely hard. They're written in dense medical language, full of jargon that assumes you either have a research background or at least a solid foundation in health science. My dad is sharp and motivated, and even he found it difficult. For a lot of families, that barrier means they never get past the first paragraph.

That felt wrong to us. The hope was right there, but not accessible.

So I built Parkinson's Pathways to fix that. It's a free tool that pulls clinical trials directly from ClinicalTrials.gov, updated daily, and presents them in plain language that any family can understand. No medical degree required.

My dad found hope in the sheer volume of research being done for this disease. I want every Parkinson's family to be able to find that same hope, without needing a science degree to access it.