The Full Story
About
CardIO began with a simple observation. During a visit to my hometown in Shanxi Province, China, the summer during medical school, I witnessed how deeply underserved the community was in healthcare. Many patients lacked the resources to access hospitals, leading to a high prevalence of uncontrolled chronic illnesses.
To help address this gap, I partnered with Xijing Hospital and launched a community outreach program called Healing Xi’an. With local funding and donations, we built a home-visit service staffed by volunteer medical students and retired healthcare professionals. Together, we provided health education, blood pressure and glucose screenings, and free medications for common chronic diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and COPD.
Throughout this journey, I was struck not only by the community’s urgent need for medical literacy but also by their strong love for poker and card games. That unexpected connection inspired a creative idea: what if health education could be integrated into something people already enjoy?
From that seed, CardIO was born—an innovative approach to making health knowledge accessible, engaging, and meaningful. By blending medical literacy with the familiar joy of playing cards, CardIO empowers people to learn about their health while doing something they love.
Mission
At CardIO, our mission is to transform the way people understand and manage chronic disease by making medical knowledge simple, accessible, and engaging. Inspired by firsthand experiences in underserved communities, we believe that improving medical literacy is the key to improving health outcomes.
Through creative tools like educational playing cards, we bridge the gap between enjoyment and empowerment—helping individuals learn about conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart failure while doing something familiar and fun. By raising health awareness and encouraging informed choices, we aim to change the status quo of chronic disease, one game at a time.
Vision
CardIO envisions a world where health literacy is woven seamlessly into daily life. Rooted in a personal mission to improve awareness of cardiac conditions, we begin with educational poker cards that bring medical knowledge into the hands of patients in a fun, familiar way.
But this is only the beginning. Our long-term vision is to expand beyond heart disease to include other chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension, and heart failure, empowering people to better understand and manage their health across a wide spectrum of illnesses.
We also aspire to grow beyond playing cards. Introduce new card games and everyday accessories like cups, shirts, and other touchpoints, so that health education is not confined to the clinic but becomes part of how people live, play, and connect.
