What Next of Kin does, step by step, in plain language.
Last reviewed: April 2026 | Maintained by: Next of Kin
Next of Kin has two sides. A caregiver builds a knowledge base. A carer uses it.
Here is what each looks like.
You register and create a profile for the person you care for. You add their name, a photo, and the one thing you'd want every new carer to know before they start. That's enough to begin.
There is no right way to do this and no particular order. You can:
Upload what you already have. Journals, diaries, notes, care plans, photos, voice notes, old letters, therapist reports — anything that tells the story of who this person is. You choose a loose category (journals, documents, photos, voice recordings, conversations) but you don't need to be precise. We can sort things out later.
Write in the Live Journal. A large, open text field where you can type, paste, or speak anything you want to capture. It saves automatically. There's no format and no length limit. Use it at the end of a long day when you want to record something before you forget.
Complete a guided interview. Seven conversations, each one focused on a different area of knowledge. An AI interviewer asks questions and follows where you go. You speak your answers aloud — it transcribes everything. The interviews cover:
You can do them in any order, pause and return, and take as long as you need.
If someone else knows this person well — a sibling, a second parent, a long-term therapist — you can invite them to contribute. They get their own access and can add uploads, interviews, and notes. Everything they add is attributed to them.
When a carer needs to understand the person you care for, you generate a QR code from your portal. The carer scans it. They get temporary access — you choose how long — to read the profile and ask questions. No account needed, no app to download. When the code expires, access ends.
You can see who has accessed the profile and when.
When a carer scans a QR code, they land on a clean, simple page. No login. No technical knowledge needed.
The first thing they see is the must-know information — the thing the family wanted every carer to read before they started. Then a photo of the person, their name, and a summary of who they are.
Below that is a chat interface. The carer can ask anything:
The answer comes back in plain language, drawn from what the family shared. It includes a citation — so the carer knows the answer came from Evelyn's journal or from a specific interview, not from a general care database.
Carers can also add notes — observations from their time with the person. Those notes go back to the family for review.
It's worth being clear about the limits.
It is not a care plan. Formal care plans are produced by trained professionals and carry legal weight. Next of Kin doesn't replace them.
It is not a medical record system. Clinical diagnoses, medications, and health history belong in formal medical records. Next of Kin is for the personal knowledge that sits alongside those records.
It is not always complete. The knowledge base only contains what has been shared. If a family hasn't mentioned something, Next of Kin doesn't know it.
It is not infallible. Answers are drawn from what the family shared and should be treated as informed suggestions, not instructions. Carers should always use their own professional judgment.
It does not replace human relationship. Getting to know someone takes time, presence, and care. Next of Kin gives carers a head start — it doesn't give them a shortcut.
The AI that generates answers uses a technique called retrieval-augmented generation. In simple terms: it searches the knowledge base for relevant content, retrieves the actual words from journals, interviews, and notes, and uses those to construct an answer. It does not make things up. If it doesn't have an answer, it says so.
For a fuller explanation of how the technology works, see our About the Technology page.
If something here isn't clear, write to us at hello@nextofkin.ai. We'd rather explain something twice than leave you uncertain.