内容来源：https://www.wired.com/story/apps-for-caregivers-get-a-dose-of-ai-but-that-might-not-be-enough/

内容总结：

美国约有6300万看护者长期承担照护重任，每周平均投入多达27小时，身心与经济压力持续加剧。为缓解这一困境，多款看护类应用相继问世：Medisafe可追踪用药并提醒服药，Caring Village提供预约日历、任务清单及AI助手，Mejo将患者病史整合为一页摘要供看护者与医生共享，Briggzy致力于在不同工作时段的家庭成员间交接照护信息，Citizen Health则通过安全门户收集病历并推出AI“健康队友”Ari，可追踪症状、整理就诊问题并协助导航保险与政府福利。与此同时，专家提醒此类应用多数未经FDA审查，用户健康信息不受HIPAA联邦隐私法规保护，隐私保障多依赖企业合同承诺。业内人士指出，应用维护需大量手动录入，医生等专业人员通常不会登录更新，负担仍落在看护者身上；看护危机无法由单一家庭解决，需政府、私营部门与家庭成员共同参与。

中文翻译：

我丈夫和我是中间那个儿子的照护者，他有多重残障，需要全天候的支持。我们尽量让彼此随时了解他每天生活中的各种活动，同时还要应付他众多的专科医生、各项检查和治疗。我们必须在保持持续沟通的同时，还要上班、照顾三个青少年、操持家务。真的很不容易。

我们并不是唯一在挣扎的人。根据美国退休人员协会的数据，2025年预计有6300万美国人在照护患有疾病或残障的成年人或儿童。平均而言，这些照护者每周要花多达27个小时提供照护。

这场照护危机——如此多的美国人持续提供复杂的照护服务，结果却承受着健康恶化、经济压力和社交孤立的代价——正在不断加剧，因为照护者需要更多支持和更好的体系。

好在，为了减轻心理负担，照护者应用程序应运而生，面向的是那些正在支持老人、儿童或任何需要定期管理的诊断患者的家庭。

面向不同类型照护者的应用程序

每个照护者的情况都不同，这一领域的应用程序和项目也反映了需求的多样性。

Medisafe创建于2013年，可以追踪药物并发送提醒，让用户不会漏服。该程序还可以在漏服时通知照护者。它让用户能够追踪就医预约、记录症状，并维护一份医疗联系人和测量数据的清单。它还有一个药物相互作用检查功能，用户可以输入多种药物，查看同时服用是否安全。

Caring Village成立于2015年，有预约日历、待办事项清单和健康日志，用户可以记录亲人的症状和情绪，甚至可以上传照片。照护者可以通过该应用分配任务、制定照护计划，并接收服药提醒。该应用还配备了一个名为Julia的人工智能助手，可以回答照护相关的问题。

2022年，布雷特·康卡克基于自己照护两个有复杂需求的儿子的经历，与人共同创建了Mejo，一款基于网页的照护者应用。用户输入个人的病史信息，然后整合成一页纸的摘要，可以与照护者、医生和治疗师共享。

“很多人认为照护始于也终于与医疗系统的互动，但很大一部分其实发生在就诊之间的那些事情上，”康卡克说。“这正是我们关注的重点。”每月6美元或每年60美元的高级版Mejo让用户可以使用每日日志功能，并可以与其他照护者共享，这样每个人都能保持信息同步，而不必通过口头交流来追赶进度。

目前，Mejo中的信息需要手动输入，但康卡克说他的团队正在研究如何融入人工智能，帮助用户在就医时提出合适的问题。

布雷特·罗威尔的儿子布里格斯患有脑瘫，他正在开发一款名为Briggzy的应用，以便他和工作时间不同的妻子能更轻松地交接对儿子的照护。Briggzy目前处于测试阶段，罗威尔希望在2027年向更广泛的群体推出。

“我妻子带（我们儿子）去了大部分预约，因为我朝八晚五上班，她那段时间正好休息，”罗威尔说。“所以单是那些问卷，如果没有Briggzy，我一半都不知道怎么回答。我的目标是把她的想法带到一个我们可以共享的空间里，这样我就能帮上忙。”

纳莎·菲特有一个患有罕见病的女儿，她与联合创始人法里德·维吉于2024年推出了Citizen Health，用于收集患者的医疗记录并将其存储在一个安全的门户网站中。“在用户同意的情况下，我们可以从这些医疗记录中提取信息，进行去标识化处理，统一格式，并由此开始提取对疾病的了解，”菲特说。“然后我们把这些了解反馈给患者，让他们更好地了解孩子疾病的发展轨迹。”Citizen Health与患者权益倡导组织合作，支持他们在药物研发方面的研究。

六个月前，该公司推出了一款名为Ari的人工智能“健康队友”，让照护者和患者可以通过发短信的方式追踪亲人的照护情况和症状。Ari目前处于测试阶段，还可以访问医疗记录、患者门户和谷歌日历事件，包括具体的预约日期和手术安排。Ari会注意照护者的行为模式，比如他们是否在一天中不同时间服药，以及这可能如何影响症状。它通过总结过往医疗信息并为患者和照护者准备就医时向医疗专业人员提出的合适问题，帮助他们做好就诊准备。它还可以帮助了解保险和政府福利。

目前，Ari仅对罕见病患者开放，但目标是让其对所有照护者和患者可用且有用。

试图减轻负担

格林·科恩是哈佛法学院生物伦理与卫生法研究员和教授，他对人工智能在健康领域的整体前景持乐观态度。“例如，我认为它会让许多患者能够在就诊前准备好他们想问医生的问题。”

但他表示，用户应该睁大眼睛进入这个过程，了解风险以及你能从中得到什么，尤其是当产品免费或便宜的时候。

科恩说，这些设备大多不是医疗设备。“因此，FDA没有对它们进行审查，所以它们的安全性和有效性仍然是个问号，或者只能听信公司的说法。”

患者和照护者输入这些人工智能工具的健康信息不受联邦HIPAA法规的保护，因为这些信息通常不是来自受管辖实体，而是来自个人或家庭中的数据收集。“如果你的隐私很重要，你在意信息如何被使用，在某些情况下，你唯一能依赖的就是合同承诺，”科恩说。“它们通常有条款在很多情况下免除（公司）的责任。”

他还警告说，收集的信息可能不仅涉及接受照护的人，还可能包括父母或其他照护者的信息。

虽然我很喜欢把我儿子的所有信息集中在一个地方的想法——这样我可以追踪规律、给医生更新情况时不会感到情绪疲惫、轻松地把照护需求交接给我丈夫——但确保我们定期更新应用才是真正看到这些好处的关键。

丹尼斯·M·布朗是照护岁月培训学院的首席执行官兼创始人，她见过许多应用程序来了又走，因为她说维护起来可能很繁琐，尤其是当照护者已经超负荷的时候。

“我们必须把数据上传到应用中（照护计划、日程安排、任务），这是大量的工作，”布朗说。“医生、上门护士、治疗师或医院出院规划师不会登录应用来提供更新，这最终又落回到照护者身上。”

说到底，对照护者应用的需求是巨大的，这个社区中的许多开发者——其中很多人本身就是照护者——正在努力做些什么来减轻负担。

“技术和应用程序可以为更广泛的无缝照护整合打开大门——也希望减轻你作为照护者的压力，”美国全国老龄委员会直接照护劳动力发展主任妮可·豪威尔说。但她表示，最终解决（整个照护危机的）方案不是一个家庭、一个照护者能解决的。

“必须各方齐心协力。必须是政府。必须是私营部门。必须是家庭成员站出来说出残酷的真相，这样我们才能发挥美国创新的最佳水平，把事情推到我们需要的位置。”

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英文来源：

My husband and I are caregivers for our middle son, who has multiple disabilities and requires full-time support. We do our best to keep one another up to date on the activities that fill his daily life while also managing his numerous medical specialists, procedures, and therapies. We have to stay in constant communication while also working our jobs, caring for three teenagers, and managing a household. It’s tough.
We’re not alone in our struggles. According to AARP, in 2025, an estimated 63 million Americans cared for adults or children with a medical condition or disability. On average, these caregivers spend up to 27 hours per week providing care.
This caregiver crisis, where so many Americans provide ongoing, complex care and, as a result, endure poor health, financial strain, and isolation, is worsening as caregivers need more support and better systems.
Helpfully, to lighten the mental load, caregiver apps are aimed at families who are supporting seniors, children, or anyone with a diagnosis that needs regular management.
Apps for Different Types of Caregivers
Every caregiver’s situation is different, and the apps and programs in this space reflect a diversity of needs.
Medisafe, which was created in 2013, tracks medications and sends reminders so users don’t miss a dose. The program can also notify a caregiver if a dose is missed. It gives its users the ability to track medical appointments, track their symptoms, and maintain a list of health care contacts and measurements. It also has a drug interaction checker where users can enter multiple medications to see if they are safe to take at the same time.
Caring Village, which was founded in 2015, has an appointment calendar, a to-do list, and a wellness journal where users can keep track of their loved one’s symptoms and moods, and even upload a photo. Caregivers can assign tasks through the app, create a care plan, and receive reminders to take medication. The app also comes with an AI assistant called Julia that can answer caregiving questions.
In 2022, Bret Koncak, based on his experiences with his two sons who have complex needs, cocreated Mejo, a web-based caregiver app. Users enter an individual’s medical history, which is then consolidated into a one-page summary that can be shared with caregivers, doctors, and therapists.
“A lot of people think that caregiving begins and ends with interactions with the health care system, but a lot of it is about what happens between care visits,” says Koncak. “That's what we're focused on.” For $6 a month or $60 a year, the premium version of Mejo gives users access to daily journaling, which they can share with other caregivers, so everyone stays on the same page without having to catch up verbally.
For now, information in Mejo is entered manually, but Koncak says his team is looking into ways to incorporate AI to help users come up with appropriate questions to ask during medical appointments.
Brett Rowell, whose son Briggs has cerebral palsy, is creating an app called Briggzy, so he and his wife, who work different hours, can more easily hand off their son’s care. Briggzy is currently in the testing phase, and Rowell hopes to launch it to a wider community in 2027.
“My wife took [our son] to most of the appointments because I worked 8 to 5 and she was off during that time,” said Rowell. “So the questionnaires alone, I don't know how to answer half of them unless I have Briggzy. My goal was to bring her mind into a shared space for me, so that way I can be helpful.”
Nasha Fitter, who has a daughter with a rare disease, launched Citizen Health in 2024 with cofounder Farid Vij to collect medical records for patients and store them in a secure portal. “With the users’ consent, we can extract information from those medical records, deidentify it, harmonize it, and start to pull an understanding of diseases through that,” says Fitter. “And then we feed that understanding back to patients so they would get a better sense of the trajectory of their child’s disease.” Citizen Health works with patient advocacy groups to support their research on drug development.
Six months ago, the company launched Ari, an AI “health teammate” that lets caregivers and patients track their loved one's care and symptoms by texting with it. Ari, currently in beta, can also access medical records, patient portals, and Google Calendar events, including specific appointment dates and surgeries. Ari notices caregiver patterns, such as whether they take medication at different times of the day and how that might impact symptoms. It prepares patients and caregivers for appointments by summarizing past medical information and providing appropriate questions to ask medical professionals. And it can help navigate insurance and government benefits.
Right now, Ari is only available for people with rare diseases, but the goal is to make it available and useful to all caregivers and patients.
Trying to Lighten the Load
I. Glenn Cohen, a bioethics and health law researcher and professor at Harvard Law School, is optimistic about AI in the health space overall. “For example, I think it will empower many patients to prep for questions they might want to ask their doctor before going in to see them.”
But he says that users should go into the process with their eyes open to understand the risks and what you're getting out of it, especially if a product is free or cheap.
Most of these devices are not medical devices, says Cohen. “As such, the FDA has not reviewed them, so their safety and efficacy remain a question mark, or it's the company's word for it that you have to take.”
The health information patients and caregivers plug into these AI tools is not protected by federal HIPAA statutes because the information is typically not coming from a covered entity. Instead, it comes from a person or from data collection at home. “If your privacy is important and you care about how the information is used, in some cases, all you can rely on is the contractual promises,” Cohen says. “They typically have language that absolves [the companies] from responsibility in many instances.”
He also warns that the information collected may not be only for the person receiving care, but may also include information about parents or other caregivers.
While I love the idea of keeping my son’s information all in one place so I can keep track of patterns, update his doctors without feeling emotionally drained, and easily hand off his caregiving needs to my husband, making sure we update the app regularly will be the key to actually seeing those benefits.
Denise M. Brown, CEO and founder of the Caregiving Years Training Academy, has seen many apps come and go because she says they can be tedious to maintain, especially when caregivers are already overloaded.
“We have to upload data to the app (care plans, schedules, tasks), and that’s a lot of work,” Brown says. “A physician, visiting nurse, therapist, or hospital discharge planner won’t log into the app to provide updates, which ends up falling back on the caregiver.”
At the end of the day, the need for caregiver apps is great, and many developers in this community, many of whom are caregivers themselves, are trying to do something to lessen the load.
“The technology and apps can open the door for broader seamless integration of care—and hopefully less stress on you as the caregiver,” says Nicole Howell, director of direct care workforce development at the National Council on Aging. But she says the final solution [to the overall caregiver crisis] will be something that not one family, not one caregiver can solve.
“It has to be all hands at the wheel. It has to be government. It has to be private. It has to be family members speaking up, saying the hard truth so we get the best of American ingenuity to move this to where we need to be.”
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