Why RelayCare
About RelayCare
Why we built this, who we are, and what we believe about family caregiving.
Our story
My Sister Did This Alone. We Built RelayCare to Share the Load.
My mom, Michelle, had a stroke, and what followed was one complication after another, until she could no longer work or take care of herself. My sister Dawn stepped in as her primary caregiver, and she did it while holding down a full-time job.
She drove Mom to her doctor's appointments and hospital visits, made sure her medications were taken on time, and spent hours on the phone with insurance. After every appointment, she was the one who had to remember what the doctor said. When a long discharge packet came home, she was the one who sat down and worked out what needed to be done and what to avoid. Through all of it, she was trying to keep the rest of the family in the loop. It became a job of its own, and the stress took a toll on her both mentally and physically.
My brother and I helped whenever we could, but we didn't live close enough to take much off her plate.
Dawn is one of about 63 million Americans who care for a family member without pay, an average of 27 hours every week (AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, 2025). Most people have no idea what that involves until they're the one doing it. There are days when resentment creeps in, toward other family members and sometimes even toward the person you're caring for. That's the nature of it, even if it's hard to admit.
Dawn applied for FMLA so she could take time off work and focus on Mom, but by the time it was approved, it was too late. We lost Mom to complications from her stroke.
A year and a half later, my son Justin and I started building RelayCare, drawing on everything we'd seen firsthand.
If you're reading this, you may be the Dawn in your family. You're the one the doctor's office calls, the one who knows which pill is the new one, and the one everyone turns to when they want to know how Mom's doing.
We built RelayCare for you. Record the doctor's visit, with their OK, and you'll get a plain-language summary of what was said, so you're not relying on memory in a parking lot. Snap photos of a discharge packet and RelayCare pulls out the instructions, the warning signs and the follow-ups, each one pointing back to the page it came from. Medications, appointments and tasks all live in one place your whole family can see, so when someone asks how the appointment went, the answer is already there.
Your siblings may live too far away to help in person. You may be an only child with no one to call at all. Either way, you shouldn't have to hold all of this in your head.
We've also added guides for the things nobody warns you about. One walks you through FMLA, so you can start early enough to actually use it, and you don't find out the way Dawn did. Another shows you where to check whether you can get paid as a family caregiver, because many states have programs for this and most families never hear about them until someone tells them.
Our hope is that RelayCare gives you back some time in your day, eases the stress and overwhelm, and leaves you more time to just be with the person you love.
John and Justin, co-founders
The Problem We're Solving
Caring for an aging parent shouldn't require you to be a project manager, a medical records clerk, and a family coordinator all at once — but that's what it feels like.
Medications get written on sticky notes. Appointment details live in one person's memory. Updates get lost in group texts. Siblings ask "what did the doctor say?" and you're trying to remember while also cooking dinner.
Most caregiving tools are built for facilities, case managers, or healthcare systems. They're not built for the adult daughter coordinating care for her mom while working full-time and raising her own kids.
That's the gap RelayCare was built to fill.
How we're building it
Our Approach
We're building RelayCare by talking to families who are actually doing this work — coordinating care, managing medications, keeping siblings in the loop, trying to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.
We're in private testing right now because we'd rather get it right with a small group of families than launch something half-built to everyone at once.
We build around the problems caregivers run into again and again: forgetting what the doctor said, coordinating siblings over a weekend, keeping medications straight, and finding the right paper when it's needed.
What We Believe
Built for caregivers, not facilities
RelayCare is designed for the person actually doing the coordinating — not hospital systems, not care facilities, not case managers. The family member who's juggling everything.
Privacy isn't negotiable
Your parent's medical information is personal. We don't sell data, and we don't share your information with advertisers. Period.
Honest about what we don't know
We're in testing because we're still learning. We'd rather be transparent about where we are than pretend we have it all figured out.
Who We Are
RelayCare is built by a small team that understands caregiving isn't abstract — it's personal, it's exhausting, and it matters.
If you want to know more about the team, the roadmap, or how we're building this, reach out. We're happy to talk.
Where We're Going
Right now, we're focused on getting the core experience right: medications, appointments, family coordination, and handoffs.
Down the road, we want to add deeper integrations (calendar sync, health records) and features that make coordination even smoother.
But we're not trying to build everything at once. We'd rather do a few things really well than a dozen things poorly.
If you're coordinating care for a parent and this sounds like something you need, we'd love to have you.
Want to Know More?
Questions about RelayCare, the roadmap, or how we're building this? We're happy to talk.