The gap
Caregiving was left out of the AI moment.
Not because the work is small. Because the people doing it were never the customer. This is the gap LabyrinthKey exists to close, and the evidence that it is real.
The scale
An economy the size of a country, run by families.
$873.5B
The estimated annual value of unpaid family caregiving labour in the United States — 3.2% of GDP.
Otsuka US, 2024
67%
Of working caregivers report difficulty balancing their career with caregiving responsibilities.
AARP Public Policy Institute, 2024
48%
Of US states are classified as “critical” or “high risk” for caregiving capacity.
Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2025
1 in 31
Eight-year-olds identified with autism spectrum disorder, up from 1 in 150 in 2000.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025
Why it exists
Three structural reasons, none of them accidental.
The absence of good tools for caregivers is not an oversight anyone needs to apologise for. It is what you get when you follow the money three times in a row.
It was built for the institution
Care technology is sold to hospitals, clinics, payers and agencies, because that is where the budget sits. The household is not the customer, so the household is not the user.
It was built around billing
What gets recorded is what gets reimbursed. The parts of caregiving with no billing code — the phone calls, the transitions, the 2 a.m. decisions — leave no trace in any system.
It was built to be used daily
Consumer health tools are designed to maximise return visits. A caregiver does not want another daily habit. They want the thing handled so they can put the phone down.
The mismatch
Built for the visit. Lived in the hours between.
Care tech, as built
Assumes a user with time to learn the interface
What the household needs
Assumes a user who opened this between a phone call and a school pickup
Care tech, as built
Optimises for the encounter — the visit, the session, the appointment
What the household needs
Optimises for the 8,000 hours a year that happen between encounters
Care tech, as built
Treats context as data to be entered
What the household needs
Treats context as something the caregiver already carries, and the tool should hold
Care tech, as built
Measures success in engagement
What the household needs
Measures success in how quickly you can stop using it today
What we’re doing about it
We picked the hardest household to build for first.
Caregivers of neurodivergent kids sit at the intersection of education law, clinical care, behavioural support and family logistics — four systems that do not talk to each other, none of which were designed around the person holding all four. If a tool can genuinely help there, the approach travels.
KeyAide is that tool, and it is free. What we learned building it — the parts that are specific to neurodiversity, and the much larger part that is simply what caregiving AI has to get right — is what we can now bring to other caregiving contexts.
Whenever you’re ready.
KeyAide is free. No login wall, no medical claims, no judgment. Just a careful voice in your corner when you need one.
Walking the labyrinth, together