Five technology offerings for older adults from Connected Health Boston 2017

An event for health tech vendors to reach other health tech vendors.  This event is an odd mix of technology service providers, health tech vendors (multiple categories), and startups looking to engage from a business partnership, channel, solution set perspective. The event was preceded earlier in the year with a post about the Top Five Tech Trends in Healthy Longevity which include: Virtual Assistants, Virtual Coaching for Chronic Conditions, Caregiver Apps and Social Networks, Social Robots, and Virtual Reality.  And there were a number of exhibitors at the event that reinforced that trend list – some noted in previous blog posts. All material sourced from company information:

FallCall Solutions. "ElderCheck Now: an application that was exclusively designed for iPhone® and Apple Watch®. When installed on both caregiver and elder devices, ElderCheck Now has the ability for a caregiver to maintain contact with their loved one any time of day through simplified, intuitive check-in screens right on a loved one’s wrist, or on their nearby iPhone.  What’s even better: after initially purchasing ElderCheck Now, there are NO SUBSCRIPTION FEES! Caregivers can check-in as many times as they want…Elders can respond as much as they want.  Whatever the situation, ElderCheck Now can be that extra link when you can’t be by someone’s side."  Learn more at ElderCheckNow from FallCall Solutions.

PilloHealth. lPillo is an intelligent home health companion robot that can manage your medications, answer your medical questions, re-order medications, send notifications to family members when medications are missed, and connect you directly with doctors. Using the latest in voice and facial recognition technologies, Pillo can hear, see and understand you. This enables him to adapt his functionalities to serve your specific needs. And to ensure that your supplements, medication, and personal data are all totally secure."  Learn more at PilloHealth.

PropelHealth. "Propel Health is in the 'Personal Connected Health and Wellness Business' and there has never been a better time to lead the transformation to create empowered health and wellness for individuals.  While most of the 'healthcare' industry focuses their investment and innovation on an individual 'in the healthcare system' very few are focused on creating an empowered, proactive, connected experience to help keep the individual 'out of the system' – when they are striving to be healthy, manage a chronic illness, recover from an in-patient procedure or are between doctor visits.  With personalized Body Area Networks of wearables and Smart Personal Area Network of environmental sensors in the home, you can create an environment that keeps you well and engages your love and support team to help when things move out of your defined thresholds." Learn more at PropelHealth.net.

Rendever. Co-founded by Reed Hayes, Dennis Lally and Tom Neumann, Rendever is a startup that strives to bring virtual technology to older adults. The co-founders explained that they hope to not only give the elderly virtual experiences they might be incapable of having in reality, but also give them a better quality of life." At Connected Health here is the description: "Rendever provides a turnkey virtual reality platform for improving patient experience and outcomes. With group sync technology and external tablet controls, the Rendever platform is the most user-friendly way to allow patients and residents to experience the benefits of virtual reality through distraction therapy, cognitive stimulation and social engagement."  Learn more at Rendever.

VRPhysio – a Virtual Reality Physical Therapy Platform. "VRPhysio™ is a VR rehabilitation software that provides a captivating experience for patients of any age, designed to stimulate people to perform specific movements while serving as an accurate tracking tool for physical therapists. VRPhysio™ includes a series of full body exercises suitable for physical rehabilitation treatment, both at the clinic and at home. Utilizing real-time data analysis based on advanced algorithms, the program generates progress reports containing high-resolution metrics on improvement. VRPhysio™ transforms patients' exercises to a fun and engaging experience while their PT monitors their adherence and outcomes. Such insights into patient performance over time, both in the clinic and at home, enable precise analysis and adjusting treatment regimens." Learn more at VRHealthgroup.

category tags: 

mHealth-Digital Health-Telehealth, home health care, Boomer-Senior Tech Business, VR/AR technology

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/five-technology-offerings-older-adults-connected-health-boston-2017

October 2017: Research and Initiatives for Aging in Place

October is a busy month of events, new research and announcements.  All are back from vacation, media announcements in the aging-related space and new businesses are launching, like Lowe's announcement that it is expanding "technology for senior care" (a balanced bookend to the Best Buy's Smart Home announcement from July.)  New research was announced, new research and business innovation centers were launched. And that doesn't count the new product announcements or tech exhibitors from this or that event.  More on that later this month.  So here are five initiatives that were announced in October:

Architectural Digest Offers a Guide for Aging in Place.  "Consider how technology-powered devices can facilitate aging in place. Mechanisms like front door locks, lighting, or thermostats that you can control with a smartphone can be easier to operate in advanced age. Though when exploring these options, consider maintenance requirements, the risks associated with malfunctions, and whether they can be operated on a device with a larger screen, like a tablet. Icons can be difficult for the visually impaired to navigate on a smartphone screen." Learn more at Architectural Digest.

Centre for Aging and Brain Health Invests 8.3 Million in Senior Care Innovation. "The Centre is a solution accelerator for the aging and brain health sector, providing support to innovators for the development, testing, and dissemination of new ideas and technologies that address unmet brain health and seniors' care needs. Established in 2015, it is the result of the largest investment in brain health and aging in Canadian history. Led by Baycrest Health Sciences, CABHI is a unique collaboration of health care, science, industry, not-for-profit and government partners whose aim is to help improve quality of life for the world's aging population, allowing older adults to age safely in the setting of their choice while maintaining their cognitive, emotional, and physical well-being." Learn more at www.cabhi.com.

Remote Care Yields Benefits across Healthcare Continuum."The Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) today released a position paper calling for greater attention to remote care delivery (RCD) as a new standard of care for the 21st century. Against a changing landscape defined by rapid population aging, this new paper, Remote Care Delivery: Transforming Healthcare and Long-Term Care to Meet 21^st Century Aging Realities outlines the many benefits of RCD to individuals, their healthcare providers and to the healthcare system overall, including its impact on healthcare costs, care outcomes and quality of life.  GCOA calls upon payers, providers and policymakers to prioritize RCD as a game-changing investment that will lead to higher-quality and cost-saving care." Learn more at Global Coalition on Aging.

Thrive Innovation Center opens its doors to showcase aging in place tech. "The Thrive Innovation Center in Louisville, Kentucky opened today. The Center is a nonprofit dedicated to showcasing new aging in place technologies in partnership with tech companies like Samsung, CDW Healthcare, Lenovo, and Aruba, as well as a number of aging tech startups. Louisville is a hub for senior care and home care companies, including Humana, Kindred Healthcare, Signature Healthcare, and Atria Senior Living. The Thrive Center will serve as a sort of show room for new aging in place technologies for those caregivers."  Learn more at the Thrive Center.

University of Michigan Announces National Poll on Healthy Aging.  "The strain of providing such care for loved ones with Alzheimer’s disease and other conditions came through in the latest results from the National Poll on Healthy Aging, with 78 percent saying caregiving was stressful. But the poll also reveals the positive side of caregiving, with 85 percent of family caregivers calling it a rewarding experience. In fact, 45 percent rated it as “very rewarding”, compared to 19 percent who called it “very stressful”. However, 40 percent of those who called dementia caregiving very stressful also said it was not rewarding. Ninety-one percent of the caregivers said they had thought about their own future care needs because of their experience taking care of someone with dementia." Learn more at University of Michigan. 

category tags: 

aging in place, Boomer-Senior Tech Business, mHealth-Digital Health-Telehealth

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/october-2017-research-and-initiatives-aging-place

For boomers, there is no such thing as keeping up with tech change

When boomers are 84 – there will be no keeping up. Just the same as when they are 64.  Many boomers disagree with that statement, finding it insulting or pessimistic or both. They will repeat plaintively that baby boomers are very different than their parents’ generation. They are comfortable with technology. See how many have smartphones! They text, use Facebook and YouTube.  Many book travel online, read TripAdvisor reviews, and even call for car pickups with an app!  So what’s the problem? Tech change is occurring faster than boomers at 64 or 84 will want to use. Groups of people who used to participate in one social network will leave in 11 million-at-a-time droves and without explanation.  And, as with Facebook, the departed will include your children and grandchildren who left to use Instagram and Snapchat. They will leave without notice – the social network equivalent of changing a phone number – with parent/grandparent only learning about it when they tried to place a (now-obsolete) phone call. Eventually they will also leave those tools behind, and so on and so forth.

Facebook users and the company did this to themselves – and that trend will repeat. So Facebook’s popularity helped young people create oversized networks (1000 Friends who Liked things!).  The news feed became unwieldy, and that was just among the people they actually sort-of knew.  Advertisers got wise to micro-targeting ads. The news feed began to display so-called targeted echo-chamber news for the demographic of you. Ah, but the news turned out to be, uh, less than trustworthy. The 170 million fake profiles made an impression, along with dark post (no, not the Russians) advertising which boosted the numbers. But not a problem other than pro forma apologizing, since Facebook’s market cap has just passed $500 billion.  The firm became a bit defensive about over-counting advertiser video views.  But that passed too. Meanwhile its own company Instagram, a smartphone photo album, has become an advertiser darling, predicted to bring in $2.8 billion of (now-Facebook) of ad revenue in 2017. Or maybe $4 billion. Meanwhile, did grandma, who was looking for photos of kids, grandkids, and the dog on Facebook, receive the news? Not likely, given Instagram’s user age profile. Is Grandma a Technology Luddite? Maybe not. Maybe she is just unaware of the change in tech habits of the family.  Should older adults just wait it out until all that guaranteed and is still left is email?  And spam, scams and fraud.

The accidental transition to Technology Luddite has nothing to do with Facebook or Instagram.  Or Amazon and the loss of book or hardware stores. Or Netflix and the long slide down of movie theaters. Or cars with drivers, or even owning a car.  Older people are not a desirable demographic, even though they have the generational wealth. Consumers naturally enable this ever-more-convenient change, whether it is the mandatory auto-play of video, or the switch to marketing via Twitter and Instagram (because teens like them) -- and marketers want younger consumers. When it happens enough, the previous era is done, and it is on with the new.  Why post a picture on Facebook when Instagram can get it there in a Linked instant -- and Facebook still gets the ad revenue? When the user can start all over with a smaller, more controlled invited network, letting that old, clumsily-large network languish with, uh, no activity really left to Like.  

In the end, the only tech that matters for older adults is tech (re)training.  For older adults who want to stay connected to the tech-fickle, making the effort to stay current matters most.That means training, whether through AARP, OATS, SeniorNet, Oasis, Senior Centers, libraries, or device stores.  Trainers, whether in the store, at the community center, or on the road need to be up to speed on demographic shifts. If last week's class was about viewing Facebook photos, maybe next week's class adds an overview of what the family members might be using now or in the near future. And next year's training will be different again. Same with online shopping, movie viewing, alternative search tools. How do companies get to the top of the Google search list? 

 

category tags: 

baby boomers, cell phones, smartphones, social media

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/boomers-there-no-such-thing-keeping-tech-change

To help seniors in 2017 and beyond, monitor person AND the place

An age-old and old-age question. When this blog was launched in 2009, one of the opening salvos raised the question of sensors in the home or a PERS device on the body? Looking at that post, the companies have mostly changed.  In the monitor-place corner, Healthsense’s eNeighbor is now Lively Home, part of GreatCall. QuietCare was eventually folded into Care Innovations. Monitoring the person, Halo Monitoring became an offering as part of one of the earliest mobile PERS companies, MobileHelp.  Monitor the place argument was based on the reality that seniors don’t always wear the pendant.  Monitor person acknowledged that seniors leave the place and are out and about. Both are crisp, make good presentations and set up message for selling. Both are inadequate arguments for what older adults need, and what providers of all types should provide.

If a firm has a wearable hammer, everything looks like a reseller channel nail.  It’s startling -- the persistent lopsidedness of solutions to enable seniors to remain both at home and independent.  The makers and sellers in the $3 billion PERS industry seem to see themselves in the safety-security space – 24-monitoring centers, more accurate GPS pinpointing of location in a world with fewer landlines, perhaps a more attractive device like Ora or UnaliWear, perhaps with built-in fall detection and voice interaction – and how about a frailty meter. The industry dips into telehealth a bit here and there – but while numbers are hard to come by, the bulk of the businesses are linked in market messaging and perception to the underlying and unchanged message of “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up.”  

Sensor-based home monitoring of seniors?  Or is this the time for connected health tech for seniors? And what’s the difference?  Now appearing in multiple guises, nurse pull cord alternatives (grandCare and Lively Home), sensors are still around. But as with Care Innovations, these sensors and their data sources and destinations are less about in-home reseller channels, and more about doctor-hospital channel of so-called Connected Health.  Are the subjects of connected health actually seniors? Maybe, but it is not clear and that is deliberate.  Note the missing ‘aging’ word in the content pillars of next week’s Connected Health event. Not that it was ever there, even though the target beneficiary of most of these ecosystem technologies is a patient who might – someday -- be on the far side of 65.  But health innovators (and their queasy investors) are reluctant to acknowledge this overlap with aging. And with its cash cow recurring revenue, the PERS industry barely tiptoes gingerly towards connecting with health data and related services.

How about monitoring person and the place?   While each solution categories by itself may useful, each is incomplete. On the body technologies should link to on-the-server hubs of useful health information for families and providers. In the (patient and care recipient) rooms, add the up-and-about wearables capturing and serving data that can follow the discharged patients into their homes and connect with any sensors placed there. Anomalies of behavior like falling or lack of motion are essential. Printed discharge instructions must be replaced with voice-first technologies that answer a person’s key questions: “Which pills am I supposed to take with food?” “What should I do if my heart starts skipping beats?” “When is the ride pickup for my follow-up appointment?” “Please ask my son to call me – now.”   We’re not there yet in terms of what older adults need – and it’s not for lack of technology. And it is a shame.

category tags: 

IoT and home monitoring, home automation, Mobile PERS, fall prevention, fall detection, PERS

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/help-seniors-2017-and-beyond-monitor-person-and-place

To help seniors in 2017, monitor the person AND the place

An age-old and old-age question. When this blog was launched in 2009, one of the opening salvos raised the question of sensors in the home or a PERS device on the body? Looking at that post, the companies have mostly changed.  In the monitor-place corner, Healthsense’s eNeighbor is now Lively Home, part of GreatCall. QuietCare was eventually folded into Care Innovations. Monitoring the person, Halo Monitoring became an offering as part of one of the earliest mobile PERS companies, MobileHelp.  Monitor the place argument was based on the reality that seniors don’t always wear the pendant.  Monitor person acknowledged that seniors leave the place and are out and about. Both are crisp, make good presentations and set up message for selling. Both are inadequate arguments for what older adults need, and what providers of all types should provide.

If a firm has a wearable hammer, everything looks like a reseller channel nail.  It’s startling -- the persistent lopsidedness of solutions to enable seniors to remain both at home and independent.  The makers and sellers in the $3 billion PERS industry seem to see themselves in the safety-security space – 24-monitoring centers, more accurate GPS pinpointing of location in a world with fewer landlines, perhaps a more attractive device like Ora or UnaliWear, perhaps with built-in fall detection and voice interaction – and how about a frailty meter. The industry dips into telehealth a bit here and there – but while numbers are hard to come by, the bulk of the businesses are linked in market messaging and perception to the underlying and unchanged message of “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up.”  

Sensor-based home monitoring of seniors?  Or is this the time for connected health tech for seniors? And what’s the difference?  Now appearing in multiple guises, nurse pull cord alternatives (grandCare and Lively Home), sensors are still around. But as with Care Innovations, these sensors and their data sources and destinations are less about in-home reseller channels, and more about doctor-hospital channel of so-called Connected Health.  Are the subjects of connected health actually seniors? Maybe, but it is not clear and that is deliberate.  Note the missing ‘aging’ word in the content pillars of next week’s Connected Health event. Not that it was ever there, even though the target beneficiary of most of these ecosystem technologies is a patient who might – someday -- be on the far side of 65.  But health innovators (and their queasy investors) are reluctant to acknowledge this overlap with aging. And with its cash cow recurring revenue, the PERS industry barely tiptoes gingerly towards connecting with health data and related services.

How about monitoring person and the place?   While each solution categories by itself may useful, each is incomplete. On the body technologies should link to on-the-server hubs of useful health information for families and providers. In the (patient and care recipient) rooms, add the up-and-about wearables capturing and serving data that can follow the discharged patients into their homes and connect with any sensors placed there. Anomalies of behavior like falling or lack of motion are essential. Printed discharge instructions must be replaced with voice-first technologies that answer a person’s key questions: “Which pills am I supposed to take with food?” “What should I do if my heart starts skipping beats?” “When is the ride pickup for my follow-up appointment?” “Please ask my son to call me – now.”   We’re not there yet in terms of what older adults need – and it’s not for lack of technology. And it is a shame.

category tags: 

IoT and home monitoring, home automation, Mobile PERS, fall prevention, fall detection, PERS

• 

from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/help-seniors-2017-monitor-person-and-place

Innovation today: Making tech you don’t want, can’t use or doesn’t work

Rant on.  Forcing tech onto the customer is standard operating procedure for companies. Because of advertiser pressure, for example, we have to make an effort to stop auto-playing videos in news feeds, news sites, ads, etc. – completely missing the possibility that the viewer might be staring at a smartphone in the train’s quiet car, or up early when a spouse is still asleep.  Or worse, the news feed shows a video that no one should ever see -- but has yet to be taken down by one of the 3000 take-it-down new hires. 

Tech competition -- masked as innovation -- has transcended the absurdity zone. The current (business?) model forces technology improvements, whether on phones, cars, or software, without an opportunity to opt out or roll back. Testing has become so yesterday, and the changes, which are all about one-upmanship among tech and car companies' non-stop PR machines, are worse than a bad user experience. If the device costs money or the software depends on advertisers imagining that they are reaching consumers, or the consumer needs to WANT the car, something beyond the device or marketing is truly broken. Three examples:

• The forced upgrade – no going back. You may have noticed that software upgrades and new devices seem to be plagued with bugs, workarounds, and irritants – take the iPhone update this past week – and unlike previous versions, there’s no going back to old versions.  Samsung offered an unwanted guest in its new S8. Say hello to Bixby – the virtual assistant that makes Siri look like a rocket scientist. And optimizing the vendor’s support process, of course, seems to be the objective of the no-going-back strategy. Why should they have to deal with multiple versions? Because Microsoft has doing this forever? But of course that’s in the 'enterprise' world of PCs, where there is an IT support staff. Who must support that corporate policy nightmare, Bring Your Own Device. And as with Bixby, auto-play videos, and other, uh, 'features', one must carefully study the user forums to learn how to disable, get rid of, go back, or avoid, this so-called improvement.

• The self-driving car – who asked for this?  You have to love the determination of Google and its salivating imitators. Death is not a deterrent – apparently it was the driver’s fault, he was ignoring warnings.  Okay, what about that Pew survey last week?  Most Americans expect cars to be driverless within 50 years, but 56% of those surveyed still won’t ride in them.  So the conclusion?  Apparently better marketing will change that perception, long before 50 years, since this much-hyped innovation will be on the road shortly, even by 2020.  Audi will make it better, their PR machine says so. But will there be a clear identification on the car – big label, big letters? So you could know that you are being passed by a car that may still have an undetected  bug in its avoidance maneuvers?  When did we say that we wanted a car like this? Oh, we actually said the opposite -- in MIT study? JD Power? Gartner?

• Car info and entertainment systems – distracting drivers.  AAA Foundation for Safety recently published a report about the systems in higher-end cars, many features tested (across 30 different cars) are distracting and take the driver’s mind off the road. According to researchers, these "infotainment systems tested could be made safer by following federal recommendations such as locking out text, social media, and navigation inputs while the car is in motion." Will that happen? Unlikely.  But distracted driving has been debunked as a rational for self-driving cars. No kidding. Rant off.

category tags: 

vehicle/transportation technology-services, cell phones, smartphones

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/innovation-today-making-tech-you-don-t-want-can-t-use-or-doesn-t-work

Why don’t home care agencies offer tech support?

Maybe Best Buy has an idea worth copying from Amazon. In 2015, Amazon introduced Amazon Home Services, which fairly recently added tech services, including sending a local tech professional to your home. The work might be setting up a router; connections for 4 devices; password protection; and use and troubleshooting instructions. Recently, Best Buy launched Assured Living, a service to help long-distance adult children monitor older family members’ well-being, including setting them up with smart home technologies (costing as much as $1000 for all of them), possibly some of the list is in the ‘official’ definition. Oh yeah, and there is a service charge of $1/day.

What’s so smart about a smart home?   How smart a home is, of course, depends on how many of the options that are deployed can be outsmarted by thieves or other invading nuisances. Consider the possibility of anger, annoyance and irritation that accompanies the user experience for anyone who uses a smartphone – or stands near someone using the speaker in an airport. Perhaps smart home misbehavior might irritate just a bit more? Okay, here is the Coldwell Banker-CNET list – "controlling, automating and optimizing functions such as temperature, lighting, security, safety or entertainment, either remotely by a phone, tablet, computer or a separate system within the home itself. And it must include at least two features from a list of smart options, including appliances, entertainment lighting, outdoor sensors, and safety detectors."  Don’t laugh when you see that one in four homes in America ‘has this technology in their homes.’  Really – that survey must have included homes with just smoke alarms (96%).

So why should home care agencies care to become involved?  First, more than $400 million of VC money has been thrown at so-called tech-enabled home care, which describes little more than a portal, an app, and limited transparency to what’s going on in the home. One of the earlier young investment darlings has already exited the market – just two years after launching. But the home care industry lives on past the demise of Home Hero. Today's home care agencies are struggling mightily with a shortage of labor to perform one of the lowest-paid and most difficult jobs.  Would higher pay help or is even possible?  More 50+ workers?  Or should the companies consider deploying smart home technology that is far more comprehensive than a portal and an app? 

What would Smart Home for Home Care do and why should home care agencies offer it?  Consider that many home care aides sit with care recipients for hours on end.  Instead, spend the money to add Wifi and Internet access to a home – then start adding capabilities that stretch home care agency capability and improve quality of life at the same time. Look at what LivHome did to deliver 24x7 remote oversight – when a home care aide is NOT present. Why should that be unique when so many agencies can’t find enough workers? What if in-person time requirements were reduced but the labor savings were redirected into new tech for remote monitoring, in-home video chats, or Voice First technologies? What if home care (or home health care) agencies led the way, offering worker and client incentives to make change happen and paving the way for smarter and helpful homes?  

category tags: 

tech-enabled home care, IoT and home monitoring, cell phones, smartphones

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/why-don-t-home-care-agencies-offer-tech-support