The Care Hack Announces Strategic Partnership with McLean Hospital (Harvard Medical School)
New collaboration with The Care Hack translates clinical research and evidence-based best practice into practical tools for millions of caregivers—advancing a shift toward family-centered health care
August 1, 2025
McLean Hospital, a global leader in behavioral and mental health care, an affiliated teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, and the flagship psychiatric hospital of the Mass General Brigham integrated health care system, has announced a new collaboration with The Care Hack, a digital health company supporting families caring for loved ones with mental health disorders, dementia, and related cognitive conditions.
The partnership brings together McLean’s expertise in clinical care, research, training, and community education and The Care Hack’s caregiver-centered platform, which delivers tools, coaching, and education to families, many of whom are managing complex caregiving roles without formal guidance or support. The initiative reflects growing recognition that caregiver engagement is a critical gap in care that can drive meaningful clinical outcomes.
The Care Hack coined the term “cognitive caregivers” to describe families facing the added challenges of supporting someone with long-term psychiatric or neurodegenerative conditions.
These caregivers often manage high stress, emotional complexity, and fragmented systems. According to AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, more than 40 million Americans are unpaid caregivers, and a substantial share are navigating cognitive conditions.
At the core of the collaboration is a shared belief that family caregivers are essential partners in care. The Care Hack platform offers expert-led coaching, evidence-informed education, and crisis planning support to help families stay engaged from home. Research shows that structured caregiver support can reduce hospitalizations, improve adherence, and ease strain on clinical teams.
“Family caregivers are under-acknowledged as a resource in our health care system,” said Ipsit Vahia, MD, chief of the Division of Geriatric Psychiatry at McLean. “By working with innovative partners like The Care Hack, we can bring evidence-based strategies into the hands of those best placed to implement them.”
McLean’s innovative in-house caregiver services—including its GUIDE Program for dementia and services provided by the Division of Psychotic Disorders—underscore the hospital’s longstanding commitment to family-centered care.
McLean recognized in The Care Hack a strong partner with a purpose-built platform to help bring proven caregiver support to scale. The combination of McLean’s expertise and The Care Hack’s digital health capabilities and real-world insights will unlock new value for families and health systems alike.
“It is very hard to be a family caregiver, and yet these caregivers have the greatest impact on the lives of people living with mental illness or dementia. Supporting them—the needed support at the right time—is critically important,” said Nancy Huxley, PhD, program director, Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorders Outpatient Clinic at McLean Hospital.
“When caregivers have the right tools and guidance, patients do better and can utilize systems more effectively,” said Marie Clouqueur, LICSW, director of Caregiver Services and the GUIDE Program at McLean. “That’s why this work matters.”
The Care Hack’s founders bring both personal and clinical experience: CEO Mitul Desai is a longtime caregiver for a brother with schizophrenia, and co-founder Eli Shalenberg, MD, is a community psychiatrist who works closely with patients and their families.
“We started The Care Hack because we’ve lived the gaps in the system,” said Desai. “Partnering with McLean allows us to take what we know works and deliver it to families in ways they can use today.”
The collaboration also strengthens The Care Hack’s growing partnerships with health systems, where scalable caregiver support is emerging as a cost-saving, outcomes-driven solution for a system under strain. The Care Hack platform is designed to help organizations unlock new ways to support families and improve clinical and operational performance.
“Our platform makes it easy for health organizations to offer meaningful support to families, without having to reinvent the wheel,” said Shalenberg. “The goal is to be truly helpful to families with the highest caregiver burden, and to do so in a way that can scale.”
This collaboration signals a broader trend in health care—where supporting families isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s a strategic imperative.