Investors continue to salivate over health tech. Rant on. So the first half of 2018 saw $3.4 billion in Digital Health (which means whatever you want it to mean.) And even when investments or company rollups are specifically about the Medicare population – frothy writeups cannot bring themselves to use clear wording. Optum acquires DaVita Medical Group and Humana acquires Kindred Healthcare. Gee, what do they do? Yes that is vertical integration in the continuum of care – specifically for health services to elderly Medicare recipients. And the $146 million that went into PointClickCare – that is software for long-term care (LTPAC), another euphemism for what it really is – care of the elderly, generally in nursing homes.
Some companies see money in aging – but others hide behind euphemisms. Good for Gillette, which introduces a razor for caregivers to shave others – older family members or care recipients. They were quite specific about the use case. Best Buy makes its largest acquisition ever when it acquires GreatCall. Even Best Buy, which knows exactly what it acquired, a call center and services and products for older adults, referred to GreatCall as a leading ‘connected health services provider.’ Pretty wimpy. And sure enough, investment watchers expressed their ignorance about Best Buy’s history label the purchase as creating ‘a niche in the health space’ or expressing doubts about the acquisition. And even Best Buy connects the acquisition to its interest in ‘human needs’ – true, but not clear.
Meanwhile, startups focused on aging are shunned by the VC community. Honor founder Seth Sternberg asserts that the 65+ market attracts only 0.7% of venture capital. Even a writer trying to find examples of consumer-related initiatives ends up in Australia to hear that it takes longer to create an eCommerce site that can serve older people and must not have looked for FirstStreetOnline in the US. So with 50 million people aged 65+ now, a Longevity Economy worth $7.6 trillion, only 0.7% of venture money is allocated to serve them? Really? Thankfully the big guns like Gillette and Google see an opportunity -- and even an expansion, amazingly, of their business.
Perhaps the Voice First market will change all that. But don’t count on it. A marketer of this tech told me recently that their traction and focus is in ‘healthcare’ – not aging. Okay, mull that over – since 40% of hospital patients are elderly – accounting for 34% of health spending, despite being only 13% of the population. But to be fair, there is no elderly equivalent of Voice First KidsMD – though an entrepreneur could imagine an Alexa skill called CaregiverMD that could match up the usability of Marvee with the useful (but buried) content of WebMD or the Voice First offerings of Mayo Clinic. We can certainly hope. No doubt if more useful skills emerged that could specifically help older adults, they would no doubt be categorized and described as health care. Rant off.
from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/technology-category-cannot-be-spoken-aloud-serving-older-adults
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