Caregiver by Dovetail®

In the United States 54% of adults between the ages 40-49 are caregivers for both an aging parent and a child under 18 years old. An estimated 62% of those caregivers were women. This stage of life for caregivers coincides with raising their own family and managing a career. Due to the rising out of pocket expenses of healthcare, lack of home health resource availability and preference to initially receive care from family, 78% of Americans rely on friends and family alone, to meet their needs. The Family Caregiver Alliance reports “34.2 million Americans have provided unpaid care to an adult over the age of 50 in the last 12 months.” Elderly adults beginning with a single caregiver will add additional caregivers with increasing frailty. Increased involvement requires collaboration and effective communication to care relating to medical appointments, test results, errands, grocery and supply shopping and family followup. The current practice is to utilize a combination of text messaging, emails, group chats and phone calls to update other caregivers, a practice that is difficult to effectively manage and organize important information. Recruiting additional family members is increasingly difficult for families spread geographically across the country or the world for work or other family obligations. 

Caregiver by Dovetail® is a collaborative caregiver management platform built to streamline and organize the details associated with familial caregiving. The democratized design allows for multiple caregivers to have equitable access to information, eliminating the single person oversight model. This platform utilizes private networks and single note sharing to compartmentalize information relating to the caregivee, allowing the caregiver to separate caregiving tasks and information from the day to day management of their lives. These private networks allow users to maintain records and communication in a single space for multiple caregivers to avoid using text message, emails and group chats to disseminate updates. For example, if adult children are taking turns bringing a parent to medical appointments, updates for each appointment can be posted in the shared family space, on the calendar so that each caregiver has equitable access to the information for the next appointment. Caregiver by Dovetail® allows family members that do not live near the elderly relative to participate in care through shared shopping lists, linked platforms (Amazon, Target, Costco, Wholefoods) allowing them to help with meals and supplies from afar. 

Our solution, Caregiver by Dovetail® is working to directly improve the lives of women aged 35-55 that make up the majority of unpaid caregivers in the United States, in addition to working and raising their own families. The responsibility for elder caregiving falls disproportionately on women and the impact leads to poorer mental and physical health outcomes, burnout and further, preventable, out of pocket healthcare spending.  Since 2020, the time spent providing care has tripled and led female caregivers to alter their career trajectory, negate their own physical and mental health, and jeopardize their own financial security due to employment changes.  Unpaid caregiving has an economic impact of $600 billion annually , with family caregivers representing the largest portion of the long term care plan in the US. Caregiver by Dovetail® will reduce the strain for this population of caregivers using a collaborative approach, allowing single caregivers to recruit assistance from other family members/friends earlier and more efficiently. Single caregivers, predominantly women, are underserved in the availability of technical solutions to share caregiving responsibilities. Functioning as caregivers and managers of information requires multiple streams of communication that do not currently integrate with one another. The ability to disperse the burden of caregiving improves equity for women in this role, decreases economic strain on families due to caregiver absenteeism and leads to better health outcomes for the caregiver and the elderly adult. 

As a clinician, parent and caregiver my experience navigating all sides of the caregiving equation- from personal to professional, makes me uniquely poised to create a solution for this population. My clinical experience as an Occupational Therapist working with caregivers and aging parents informs the necessary steps and challenges families will be faced with navigating the healthcare system in the US. Managing care for an aging parent when parenting my own children informs the ICA profile for product development. As the Team Lead I understand the needs of this community because I am a member of it. Creating and implementing a solution is more effective when  friends other community members are at a similar stage to be able to provide input to guide the development of this collaborative product. 

Our prototype was built on the success of collaborative paper based products sold on https://dovetaildesigns.co. From that customer feedback we built and launched the digital beta for Caregiver by Dovetail® on the iOS app store in the early fall of 2023. It has a few initial features (note sharing, real time list building, sorting and filing notes) and is currently available for download. We have obtained a focus group of ~30 users to gather initial feedback and plan next development steps. 

We are applying to Solve to gain visibility, improve our product-market fit through the addition of new features, gain mentorship from community health experts to continue to create a product that meets the needs of female US caregivers with expanded utility to other underserved populations around the world. We want to continue to build a resource to help meet the increased caregiver demand by obtaining funding to support product development and launch.

The collaborative design of Caregiver by Dovetail® and the ability to share individual notes sets it apart from other family based solutions. The prevailing design for family apps is to create a single account and allow multiple users access to all the information- so there is no way to separate your caregiving tasks, notes, and appointments from your personal tasks, notes and appointments. The compartmentalization capacity of this product allows users to use one app to meet their day to day organization and management needs layered with caregiving tasks. 

The average smartphone user launches 9 apps per day or about 30 apps per month, with productivity apps the third most utilized category behind social networking and communication. Caregiver by Dovetail® allows users to simplify their app usage by combining features used for productivity and communication related to caregiving into a single space. This leads to less time searching through apps on phones and decreased overwhelm not having to track communication, updates, and emails through various apps, decreasing demand on caregivers. 

The design of Caregiver by Dovetail® is democratized collaboration, allowing for impact in adjacent caregiver markets- divorced parents, neurodiverse populations and parents of young children. These opportunities further promote equitable division of labor to reduce demand on the primary caregiver population, made up by roughly 75% women, through improved communication and streamlined logistics.

Proponents of role equity, like Eve Rodsky, focus on equitable division of labor by listing out daily tasks and assigning them to members of a household in their entirety. In the day to day management of home, family and career that can work well. When caregiving for an elder is layered into the equation the time spent providing care averages over 2 hours per day for family caregivers. This is all piled on top of already busy days for women managing tasks at home. Instead of a rigid approach to task division Caregiver by Dovetail® creates space for multiple caregivers to help meet the needs of an aging parent. If an adult sibling lives hours away so cannot provide hands on care, the caregiver close by can create a grocery list or amazon supply list for the distanced sibling to contribute. Instead of fielding another "I just don't know how to help or what you need," the caregiver in the home can update supply or shopping lists with necessary items to be fulfilled by another. Caregiving involves management at many levels, appointments, shopping, cleaning but can be difficult to pass off without effective communication. The product simplifies outreach for the caregiver and reduces overwhelm that eventually leads to burnout. Interviews with our target population underscore the importance of the caregiver not having to bear the burden in its entirety while also managing multiple channels of communication. The ability to handoff physical and digital tasks was also indicated as important for elderly caregivers to be able to bring in assistance from family members or paid caregivers earlier and for specific tasks. 

We aim to deploy the full scale version of Caregiver by Dovetail® by the end of 2024 to assist family caregivers and onboard 500 users. We aim to collect (anonymous) user data tracking the number of caregivers added to each network to track family network expansion in the first and third year. We will implement caregiver surveys to track health outcomes for caregivers, paid work participation changes throughout caregiving, and gender equity in division of labor. 

The beta version of Caregiver by Dovetail® is an app based solution allowing for quick onboarding of users and creation of family networks. The full scale version of this product will incorporate AI for proprietary features related to scheduling, communication, and task management.

Dr. Ashley Blackington works full time on Caregiver by Dovetail®. The technical development is carried out by Josh Perryman at a contract level until we obtain outside funding to be able to bring him on full time. We have a fractional CRO to manage B2B outreach and a fractional CMO to manage B2C outreach, both have started in recent weeks. 

Dr. Blackington began working on caregiver management tools in 2018 using paper solutions, before transitioning to digital development in 2022. The beta for Caregiver by Dovetail® was built in stages during the pandemic, over 18 months between concept and prototyping. Using a bootstrapping approach allowed us to retain full control over the product development and prevent premature dilution. 

Building this product remotely has allowed us to put together a team that is highly qualified and diverse. Our founder identifies as a woman and immigrant, our developer is African American and our fractional CRO and CMOs are both female. Being able to source talent from across the country (Chicago, Georgia, Florida, Connecticut, New Hampshire) has created the opportunity to develop a diverse team. As Caregiver by Dovetail® grows we will continue to focus on an equitable, diverse, and inclusive team through remote hiring practices. 

Our approach to launching Caregiver by Dovetail® utilizes a three arm strategy of B2B sales, B2C sales and white labelling our product for health insurance companies. Since our target population is women aged 35-55 working full time while caregiving for an elder (with or without children), we are starting with a B2B sales approach. Conducting paid pilot programs in corporate settings will allow us to reach our target population while gathering outcome data as to the effectiveness of features of the products. These outcome measures will inform product development and provide a tailored solution for women (and families) working while also caregiving for elders. Starting with B2B will support B2B sales as users downloading Caregiver by Dovetail® at work will add individuals outside of the office when creating their private networks. B2C sales will further be buoyed by social media marketing and paid advertising. Finally, a white label product targeted towards health insurance companies will provide them an option to offer both aging adults and their family to simplify caregiving for elders. This will reduce overall out of pocket health care costs for elders to be able to delay hiring private care (if at all) and reduce complications arising from management of multiple providers (appointments, medications, therapies). For adult caregivers this product will reduce overwhelm with effective collaboration options, decrease absenteeism at work associated with caregiving and improve overall health outcomes for caregivers by creating space to focus on their own mental and physical health. 

We will become financially stable through a combination of grants, product sales, and raising investment capital. We began applying for grants in April 2024 to offset development costs to bring revenue driving features online. Our full product will launch in 2024 and will be available for either a $9.99/month or $99/year subscription option. Our corporate packages start at $20/employee/year and we will bring in additional revenue with our white label option in 2025. The primary development of Caregiver by Dovetail® has been bootstrapped by our founder to delay taking on outside investment until the beta was launched, gained traction and our long term fundraising strategy was solidified. We are in current conversation with multiple Angel Investors but are unable to disclose details at this point.