Founder uses Claude to navigate rare lymphoma diagnosis and treatment choice

A post-workout arm swelling led doctors to find two blood clots in Connor Christou’s veins and an 11-by-11-by-8 centimeter mass behind his sternum. After a biopsy confirmed an aggressive non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the 35-year-old founder gathered 12 medical opinions in two days using Claude to organize bloodwork, scan results, wearable data and journal entries as he weighed chemotherapy choices.

Christou has built his life around measurement. He tracks sleep with a Whoop band and an Oura ring, and he gets nearly 100 biomarkers checked every year. His 2025 checkup was green across the board before the clot and the scan changed the picture completely. The biopsy pointed to a fast-growing lymphoma, and the notes put the incidence at roughly one in 420,000 people. The tumor had likely been present for about three months, and three more weeks would have pushed the disease to stage four.

Christou’s first oncologist recommended a lighter chemotherapy regimen, but a second opinion the night before his infusion pushed for a harder approach: continuous in-hospital infusion cycling every three weeks across six months. For his presentation, the lighter option offered roughly a 60% success rate, while the more aggressive regimen raised the odds to around 85%.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is not a single disease but a broad category of lymphocyte cancers that can be indolent or aggressive, and swollen lymph nodes, fever, drenching night sweats, weight loss and fatigue are among the common signs. Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma is usually aggressive.

Anthropic has moved Claude deeper into healthcare with HIPAA-ready infrastructure and connectors to health systems and databases. Christou is also the co-founder of Avocarrot, the ad-tech startup acquired by Glispa Global Group for $20 million in 2016, and co-founder of Keragon, a HIPAA-compliant automation platform for healthcare.