What does a family caregiver actually experience – and what do the founders building solutions for them need to understand?

In this expert session, Katie Brandt, director of caregiver support services and public relations for the Massachusetts General Hospital Frontal Temporal Disorders Unit, joins an intimate group of members from the StartUp Health community for a candid, deeply practical conversation about the realities of caregiving in America.

Katie brings a rare combination: 18+ years of personal caregiving experience, clinical work supporting hundreds of families from diagnosis through loss, and a weekly support group she describes as the largest FTD caregiver group in the country. She has navigated the VA, Medicaid, Medicare, assisted living, adult day health, and hospice – multiple times.

In this session, she covers:
🧠 Why the family caregiver is the "second patient" – and what that means for clinicians and founders alike
💸 The true financial and physical cost of caregiving, and why young onset caregivers face a compounded crisis
📋 Why verbal caregiver reports fail in clinical settings, and how documentation changes outcomes
📱 What AI is already doing in caregiver support groups – and where it falls short
🏡 The care plan trifecta: how to think across medical, home, and community domains
🌿 What's actually working – and what large-scale caregiver support could look like

For founders building in the Alzheimer's, dementia, and caregiving space, these insights will reframe how you think about your end user.

✅ Note: This video has been edited down from a full hour session that contained additional founder questions, stories, and advice. StartUp Health members attend these expert sessions live and can access full recordings through our member app.