Born from Experience: How The Care Hack Is Fixing the Caregiver Crisis

Dec 16, 2025

Mitul Desai, co-founder of The Care Hack and former healthcare policy professional, shares his journey from corporate life to supporting family caregivers. He discusses the profound impact of his brother's schizophrenia diagnosis on his family and the lack of support they faced. Mitul reveals how The Care Hack aims to empower caregivers, transforming them into vital contributors in the healthcare system. With a unique approach, they merge technology and empathy to enhance caregiver experiences, while also collaborating with healthcare providers and employers.

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ANECDOTE

Personal Catalyst For The Care Hack

Mitul Desai recounts his family's sudden role as unpaid caregivers after his younger brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the emotional and financial toll it took.
That lived experience drove him to leave a corporate career and pursue building supports for families dealing with serious mental illness.

ANECDOTE

Learning From Fountain House

Mitul worked with Fountain House to digitize a community-based recovery model for serious mental illness and saw proven, scalable psychosocial supports up close.
That experience informed The Care Hack's focus on evidence-based family and peer supports beyond the medical model.

INSIGHT

Families As A Second Health System

Families provide the majority of day-to-day care for people with cognitive illnesses and hold unique knowledge the healthcare system lacks.
Integrating family caregivers into care pathways creates better outcomes and lowers system costs.

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In this episode of the StartUp Health NOW podcast, Unity Stoakes sits down with Mitul Desai, co-founder of The Care Hack, a member of StartUp Health’s Caregiving Moonshot Community. Desai opens up about the decades-long journey that began when his younger brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia and his family became full-time caregivers – with no support, no training, and no roadmap.

Drawing from this lived experience, Mitul partnered with psychiatrist Dr. Eli Shalenberg to launch The Care Hack, a platform purpose-built for cognitive caregivers – those supporting loved ones with long-term brain and mental health conditions. Together, they’re on a mission to bring caregivers into the center of the healthcare system, not just as recipients of support, but as key contributors to better outcomes and lower costs.

You’ll hear why Mitul left a successful career in law, policy, and tech to pursue this mission, how The Care Hack is partnering with providers and payers to scale what already works, and what it means to create infrastructure for the “second healthcare system” that families already power every day.

Listen to learn why The Care Hack isn’t just another health app – it’s a movement grounded in empathy, evidence, and a belief that caregivers can change everything when given the right tools.

Want to meet founders like Mitul in person? Join us at Apollo House at JPM Healthcare Week in January.

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