I built Dovetail because I kept seeing the same thing in every hospital, every home, every clinical setting I worked in.

Family caregivers were doing essential work with no infrastructure to support them.

Across 14 years of clinical practice in inpatient, private practice, and home-based settings, I watched the same breakdown happen in every household navigating caregiving.

Family caregivers were tracking symptoms, noticing changes, and catching what no chart ever captured. They were carrying the coordination load between providers, managing everything that fell outside the hospital walls, and showing up to every appointment with weeks of observation in their heads, and being asked to summarize it into a few sentences.

They were doing clinical work. Without clinical tools. Without recognition. Without infrastructure.

Before I built anything, I listened.

I spent months in conversation with over 100 family caregivers at kitchen tables, in hospital hallways, on Zoom calls from parking lots between shifts. Adult children, spouses, siblings, and neighbors who had become the default.

Three things surfaced every time: the load collapsed onto one person and felt impossible to redistribute. The gap at discharge was where everything broke down. And the observations caregivers were already making had nowhere to go.

Those three things became the foundation for everything Dovetail does.

The platform those conversations made impossible to ignore.

Dovetail is the care coordination platform I built from what those conversations made impossible to ignore. It gives family caregivers the tools to document what they observe, coordinate across their care circle, and show up to every provider appointment with structured records instead of trying to pull from memory.

It exists because family caregivers deserve infrastructure, the same kind the healthcare system has for everyone inside its walls.

Available on iOS and Android.

Dr. Ashley Blackington, OTD, OTR/L — Founder & CEO, Dovetail Designs, Inc.

I'm a board-certified Occupational Therapist with 14 years of clinical experience across inpatient, private practice, and home-based settings. I hold a both a Master's and a Doctorate in Occupational Therapy from Tufts University.

I also run Home Field Advantage, a remote private practice helping families navigate aging-in-place decisions before a crisis forces the conversation, and AND/BOTH, a podcast about the parts of caregiving healthcare doesn't make room for.

For press or partnership inquiries: [email protected]

Dovetail is part of a broader body of work built around one belief: that the people doing this work deserve real support, real tools, and real recognition.

Explore the full ecosystem → ashleyblackington.com

If you're a family caregiver, this was built for you. Download on iOS · Download on Android

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Our Mission

Family caregivers are the invisible infrastructure of the healthcare system and it's time they had real support. Dovetail is building the tools, coordination, and clinical recognition that family caregivers have always deserved.

Dovetail connects families, healthcare, and employers to simplify the logistics of care, because caring for someone you love shouldn’t mean doing it alone.

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