What the "second patient" needs: Katie Brandt on caregiving, Alzheimer's, and what founders need to know

What does a family caregiver actually need – and what does that mean for the founders building solutions for them?

In this expert conversation, Katie Brandt, director of caregiver support services at Massachusetts General Hospital's Frontal Temporal Disorders Unit, joins the StartUp Health community to share what 18 years of personal caregiving experience and clinical work with hundreds of families has taught her.

Katie runs the largest FTD caregiver support group in the country. She is a trainer for the Alzheimer's Association, a speaker at national conferences, and a fundraiser for the MGH FTD Unit. She is also a daughter, a widow, and a mother who has navigated every layer of the caregiving system from the inside.

She covers the financial toll that caregiving extracts – disproportionately from women, and nearly double for young onset families. She explains why verbal caregiver reports in clinical settings fail, and how documentation changes outcomes. She discusses where AI is genuinely helping caregivers and where the technology-first assumption breaks down. And she describes what it would actually take to build a caregiving system that works at scale.

For anyone building in the Alzheimer's, dementia, and caregiving space, this conversation is essential.

Note: This podcast 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 the membership portal. Learn more at startuphealth.com.