The research behind Kinfold
Kinfold started with one family's search through a filing cabinet. The research shows that search is happening in millions of homes.
My dad was the record keeper in our family. When he passed, much of what he knew went with him.
Helping my mom afterward meant going through his filing cabinet and sorting through her prescriptions, trying to work out which medications she was actually taking and which she wasn't. Mom has some memory challenges, so she couldn't always fill in the gaps. The information we needed was missing, and finding it took time at a moment that was already emotional and exhausting.
I built Kinfold so no family has to go through that search on top of everything else.
Michael Mendelssohn, Founder
About 63 million Americans, roughly one in four adults, are family caregivers. That is a 45 percent increase over the past decade.
Source: AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025
How it shaped Kinfold: It is built for ordinary families, not professionals. It runs in any web browser, so nobody has to learn a complicated system.
44 percent of caregivers provide high-intensity care, and 30 percent have been caregiving for five years or more. Nearly one in four give 40 or more hours of care a week.
Source: AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025
How it shaped Kinfold: Siblings share the load. Everyone sees the same up-to-date binder, so one person does not carry it all.
29 percent of caregivers care for children and adults at the same time. Among caregivers under 50, it is 47 percent.
Source: AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, Caregiving in the U.S. 2025
How it shaped Kinfold: Guided prompts let you finish the binder in a weekend, and you can snap photos instead of typing.
In the most recent national survey data (2017 to March 2020), 43 percent of adults 65 and older had taken five or more prescription medications in the past month, up from about 24 percent in 1999 to 2000.
Source: Innes et al., Prescription Medication Use Among Older Adults in the US, JAMA Internal Medicine, 2024
How it shaped Kinfold: A dedicated Medications section shows what is current, and the ER Card pulls from it automatically. This is the exact problem our family faced.
Only about one in three U.S. adults has completed an advance directive, such as a living will or health care power of attorney. Research published in 2025 still reports the same gap.
Sources: Yadav et al., Health Affairs, 2017; Pendrey Guillen et al., Healthcare, 2025
How it shaped Kinfold: Gap alerts flag missing documents, the Wishes section is written in your parent's own words, and The Conversation scripts help families start that talk.
One in three Americans aged 40 to 60 say caring for both aging parents and children is putting them under significant emotional, physical and financial strain.
Source: Finance of America survey, December 2025
How it shaped Kinfold: One shared place for everything, so the hard moments are about your parent, not about hunting for paperwork.
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