Frequently Asked Questions

No. PathLight is not a doctor, and it does not provide medical advice. PathLight is a research intelligence tool that helps families understand what published research says about their child's condition — in plain language. Always consult your child's healthcare team for medical decisions, diagnoses, and treatment plans.

Every response is grounded in BCF's COMPASS corpus — 269,000+ and growing peer-reviewed research papers from PubMed, OpenAlex, bioRxiv, medRxiv, and Semantic Scholar. When you ask a question, PathLight searches the most relevant papers in real time and synthesizes the key findings in plain language. You can see the source papers cited at the bottom of every response.

Google searches the entire internet — including unreliable sources. PathLight searches only peer-reviewed medical research, filtered specifically for pediatric conditions. Every paper in our corpus has been processed by AI to extract key findings in plain language — so you get research-backed answers without needing a medical degree to understand them.

Yes. Completely free. Forever. Beej Care Foundation is a nonprofit whose core commitment is that no family should pay for health knowledge. PathLight will never charge families, never show ads, and never sell your data. This is a constitutional commitment of BCF — not just a current policy.

When you see Research-based on your response, it means PathLight identified your question as a factual, clinical, or informational query — such as asking about treatments, symptoms, or research findings. The response is grounded in peer-reviewed papers from our corpus, and you will see the source papers cited below the response.

When you see Supportive on your response, PathLight recognized that your question carried emotional weight — perhaps you were worried, scared, or overwhelmed. In these moments, PathLight responds with warmth and empathy first, followed by helpful information. We believe families deserve both emotional acknowledgment and research-backed answers. You are not alone in this journey.

Research sources are shown for factual, clinical questions where specific papers support the answer. For emotionally-focused questions — such as "I am scared about my child's diagnosis" — PathLight prioritizes empathetic support over citation-heavy responses. In both cases, the response is informed by BCF's research corpus.

PathLight is focused on pediatric chronic illness research. If your question is outside this scope, you will see a polite message redirecting you. This is by design — PathLight is purpose-built for families navigating specific conditions, and staying focused helps us give you better, more reliable answers within that scope.

We store almost nothing about you. When you sign in with Google, we receive your Google ID — but we immediately hash it into an anonymous token. We never store your name, email address, or any personal information. The only things stored are: your anonymous token and how many queries you have used today. No health data. No conversation history. No personal profile.

Sign-in protects you and BCF. Without authentication, automated bots could abuse PathLight — driving up costs and degrading the service for real families. By signing in with Google, we can enforce a daily query limit (50 per day — generous for real families) while keeping the service free and reliable. We never see or store your Google account details.

Never. BCF does not sell, share, or transfer any user data to third parties. Ever. We do not run ads. We do not have pharmaceutical partnerships. We do not have marketing partners. The only data we collect is an anonymous usage count — and that stays within BCF's secure AWS infrastructure.

PathLight is designed to never collect Protected Health Information (PHI), so HIPAA does not apply. We do not collect your name, medical history, diagnosis, or any health records. Our architecture is "PHI-free by design" — the safest possible approach for a family-facing health tool.

Each account can ask 50 questions per day, resetting at midnight UTC. This limit prevents automated abuse while being generous for real family use. Most families ask 2-5 questions per session. The limit resets every 24 hours automatically — you never need to do anything.

PathLight currently supports English, Hindi (हिंदी), Marathi (मराठी), Tamil (தமிழ்), Telugu (తెలుగు), Bengali (বাংলা), Gujarati (ગુજરાతી), Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), and Spanish (Español). You can type your question in any of these languages and PathLight will respond in the same language. More languages are coming soon.

PathLight currently covers: Crohn's Disease, Leukemia, Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, Thalassemia, Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD), Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA), and Food Allergy. You can also ask general chronic illness questions. BCF is continuously expanding the research corpus to cover more conditions.

Yes! PathLight works on any smartphone browser. A dedicated Android app is now available — search for PathLight by BCF on Google Play. An iOS app is coming soon. You can also add the web version to your home screen: on Chrome, tap the menu → "Add to Home Screen"; on iPhone Safari, tap Share → "Add to Home Screen."

PathLight is built by Beej Care Foundation (BCF), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit based in Texas, USA. BCF was founded to support children facing serious chronic illness — through financial assistance to families, research funding, and AI-powered tools. Learn more at beejcare.org.