That time of year -- considering technology gifts for older adults

Warning -- this is not a blog post about what to give to seniors. There are plenty of click-bait websites topping the search list, like Holiday Tech Gift Ideas or the lengthy Amazon tech gift list or even a list described as The 7 Best Tech Gifts to Buy for Seniors -- really? Maybe these are the perfect gifts – or perhaps for some family members, the DailyCaring list is appropriate. Among all these lists, there might be some intriguing items that could be welcome, if not necessarily practical. Don’t forget a set of portable batteries – extremely useful for all these devices during power outages. Okay that is enough about the What – and For Whom.  

More important than the gift itself – how should, can, or will it be used? Many of us have technology that was once useful. But sadly it's now junk -- defined as a purchased tech item that is now too slow, too obsolete, too heavy, or too much trouble. Sometimes tech-enabled items become junk almost immediately for a variety of reasons that the giver did not consider or forgot about.  Look around your own environment and the tangled nest (pun intended) of cables, connectors, chargers, cords, some specifically for devices long gone. Now consider the prospective gifts and factors such as:

• Out of the box assembly – maybe, maybe not so much.  Ideally the product has an online video somewhere that family installers can view, maybe even with family. Consider the video for Amazon Echo setup. A video might streamline these 22 steps to set up Google Home.  While the Echo setup can be done from a browser on a device that has Wi-Fi, Google Home assumes a tablet or smartphone. Like every other device joining a Wi-Fi network for the first time, these will need the network password to access it. Worn out already? Move on to...

• Ease (or lack thereof) of installation. Does a product need broadband access and that noted access to Wi-Fi?  Oh, and does the home already have Wi-Fi (and a router)? Does it need an initial setup that involves downloading software from a central site (like Google Play or the iOS App Store) – this is unfortunately still the state of the art for phone and tablet apps -- and some users, according to Pew, may never do the update -- or they debate it for a while to see if anybody was unhappy afterward. Or consider and maybe delay installing that very useful but complex Ring Doorbell -- the 11 steps include finding the breaker, a place to mount it, software setup, tuning and much more.  Okay, done...for now.  But then there are those...

• Updates -- too frequent, too many.   Don’t forget updates for devices (like smartphones, PCs and Macs) – which usually bring along security patches.  Microsoft, for example, has a pleasant weekday nicknamed Patch Tuesday – we are supposed to check out and run the updates which no doubt close gaping holes that hackers love, and which in the prior week were not perceived as gaping.  One of the upsides of Voice First offerings like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant – updates occur on the other side of the Internet wall, in the so-called Cloud, done in one place the user just accesses. And what about...

• Ongoing and much-needed support.  Perhaps this should have been mentioned first, not last.  After the holiday is over, who will help when devices appear inexplicably unusable?  Whether it is our ever-so-smart phones, our oddly-blue screens, our uncharged or mismatched connections, or other bafflement -- like accessing Internet radio stations or streaming music or video? Who gifted that product anyway and can we call them?  Or we anxiously look for a support alternative, whether it is dropping in at a tech store, calling the local or phone-based Geek team or trying Best Buy’s new offering, Assured Living.

category tags: 

cell phones, smartphones, IoT and home monitoring, Boomer-Senior Tech Business

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/time-year-considering-technology-gifts-older-adults

Living to 100 – will technology matter – and for whom?

What is the likelihood of living to 100 for older adults? Greater than you think – can you imagine that that by 2050, the number will grow from 72,000 to 1 million in the United States – in Canada, centenarians are the fastest-growing age group.  Today there are 450,000 centenarians worldwide – with the longest disability-free life expectancy found in Okinawa, Japan. Is society ready to accommodate double the number of seniors who will be living to 100 and beyond?  What will the experience be like – today’s centenarians offer a clue to how they came to live as long – genetics, healthy lifestyle, marital status. What these individuals were not, however, is socially isolated, as many of today’s boomers may be.

A conundrum – will less healthy baby boomers be among the centenarians?  Baby boomers may have a longer life expectancy at 65 than their parents – most likely due to availability of more sophisticated health care and medications. But for a disease free quality of life in their later years, they will they need to fix lifestyle and health issues that did not characterize their parents. For instance, boomers have shown themselves to be more likely to be obese, have poorer eating habits, have a greater prevalence of diabetes, and take more medications than the previous generation.  Ironically, almost all boomers want to lose weight, but when asked, ironically, they want to do so without exercise. And beyond age 80, most boomers will have some hearing loss.

Resource constrains may boost dependency on technology for seniors and caregivers.  But the benefits of technology may not just be related to disease management and lifestyle. As the population ages, will there be enough family member and professional caregivers to provide care? According to predictions, the ratio of available caregivers to potential care recipients is going to worsen. Better technology and more creative uses of it are likely opportunities to mitigate the growing caregiver gap.  These include making greater use of sensors in the home (the so-called Internet of Things) to detect issues with gait and falls. Population health data will help identify those at greatest risk of health issues and likely readmission to hospitals (see Figure 1 Table of Categories that may matter). 

Making assumptions about care helps understand centenarian future needs.  How should society leverage available and future technology capabilities?  With lengthening life expectancy, poorer health and fewer available people to provide care, we can better understand the context for technology use and centenarians. The growing cost of providing in-person care will be an impetus for delivering more care remotely, including digital health technologies for diagnosis and remote monitoring, the use of wearables like smart watches or other jewelry to sense a problem like a fall and alert others.  (See Figure 2 Centenarian Morning in the Life)

Centenarians of the future will benefit from technology (r)evolution.  Eight years ago there were no commercially available consumer tablets. Five years ago there were no smart speakers on the market – today’s older adults have the benefit of access to large bright screens, devices they can speak to naturally and expect a response and widely available in-home WiFi and growing Internet use among older adults.  However, while Internet access is growing globally, the oldest old may still be non-participants in the benefits accrued with being online.  And non-participation may be as much due to the future cost of connection as due to lack of awareness.

Figure 1: Table of technology categories that may matter

Category	Examples	Implication/Benefit/risk
AI/Voice	Voice interfaces everywhere; increased engagement tools like Alexa, Google Assistant	Cost of higher speed Internet connection; privacy concerns
Social, Learning	Social networks, Online Learning	Maintain connection to family; learning in advanced old age; isolation of the offline
Digital health	Wearables, remote patient monitoring	More effective chronic disease management; alerting care providers;
Dementia care	Engagement, cognitive, wander management wearables	Improved cognitive function, lower risk of injury to wanderers
Hearing	Self-testing websites, OTC hearing aids, amplifiers/hearables	Lower price and access, reduced stigma, enabling broader use; isolation, poorer health, dementia risk for non-users
Fall prevention /detection	Weight-bearing exercise coaching, fall detection and gait analysis wearables	Reduction of hospitalizations due to falls, prediction of injury from gait analysis; risk of resistance from health professionals
Care Coordination	Tools for tracking care resources, tasks, milestones, care status	Family caregiver organization of tasks improves care quality; barriers of non-integration with health data remain
Internet of Things /Smart systems	In-home security, Individual motion/movement, cameras	Configured homes provide greater safety for very old; non-participation due to cost and lack of awareness
Predictive analytics	Identifying at risk population, Predicting future individual incident	Health/insurer groups maintain contact with at risk groups; individual providers reach out to centenarians at risk

 

Figure 2: Centenarian morning-in-the-life scenario enabled by technology

At 101, Mrs. Johnson lives alone in an independent living community and walks without assistance.  Each day she wakes with an amplified voice-enabled alarm clock that tells her the time and offers a tip from its smart assistant on what to wear, given the weather. She views her activity schedule for the day – and sees that she is scheduled to attend lunch and a play with a grandson. She always wears her attractive smart watch which it measures her heart rate and would warn if she fell. Her path to the bathroom is lit by motion-sensing lighting and alerts a caregiver that she is up. She glances at the voice-enabled display showing messages, news and fun facts for the day – spoken aloud and displayed. Her vital signs from the watch are regularly transmitted to a nurse -- Mrs. Johnson can expect a call from a nurse if vitals are out of range. Her daily stats are transmitted and aggregated because she is part of a study tracking wellbeing of Centenarians.  Mrs. Johnson speaks a request for a ride pickup for later that day. She receives a call from her grandson, then walks to the dining room to meet friends for breakfast.

category tags: 

baby boomers, Seniors, aging in place

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/living-100-will-technology-matter-and-whom

Apple’s walled garden bites the wallet – but is the world of ‘free’ better?

Check out this startling sampling of Apple user complaints... ZDNet published a list of Apple complaints posted on Reddit (which has an Apple forum of more than 800K members) – the list was eye-opening and filled with rage about (storage, connector, power) limitations. (Oddly, in the center of the online article was an iPad ad). One commenter compared the Apple customer experience to buying a high-end Audi and discovering that the price did not include tires.  Today Apple has 44.3% market share phone ownership – compared to Android’s 54.5% (led by Samsung and LG).  Phone replacement cycles are lengthening, mostly due to high prices for new phones coupled with apparent (or fixable) durability of existing devices.

…Meantime, over in the world of ‘Free’ content, volume (even if its fake) matters most.  The Wall Street Journal notes that free content has produced the low quality mishmash of  (useless, maybe harmful) content that users must wade through to find value – noting $20 billion annual cost of spam, for example, or the deletion of fake account underway at Facebook (583 million of 2.2 billion). Twitter deleted 20 million accounts just a few months ago (out of 383 million).  According to the WSJ, Facebook gets more than 98% of its revenue from advertising, for Twitter and Google, it’s 86%. For advertising-dependent models, the number of ‘users’ seeing ads matters, even when that number is glutted with bots, fake accounts, and hidden ads, not to mention moronic posts. Consider the tiny percent of revenue that is ad-based for Microsoft or Amazon. And then there's Apple, which nickels and dimes the customer over cords and keyboards.

Mull over these two worlds – and the Netflix subscription model starts to appeal.  Netflix, which charges users monthly for a subscription, appears (gasp) to be making money offering content people want enough to pay for it.  And Apple trumpets the 'privacy' it offers by not selling the data of you. But use Apple’s Safari browser from an iPhone or tablet, and go to websites that are, uh, ad-rich, like USA Today – whoa, look at all those ads. Tormented by an advertising-based ‘Free’ model, you install AdBlock Plus, a browser extension that blocks ads, sort of.  Check out the tiny type wording at the bottom of that screen, though. "We are able to keep our open source product free by charging large entities a fee for white-listing their services." Like Google.

What is the problem -- and can it be fixed or mitigated by charging a fee for access? Is the problem for consumers just that the ads are shown? Or that the entire online ad industry is built to leverage sophisticated technology to aggregate user attention and sell advertising?  The problem for businesses is that they must participate in this circus, leading to your viewing habits being evaluated and sold to marketers in order to show the ads. Yet the recipient of content about your usage is not known to you -- the user. And if 'you' are really a bot to be discovered and crushed, or 'your' access is from a fake account, what is the revenue model for a Twitter or Facebook, really? As noted in the Wall Street Journal, one day we will internalize the meaning of the fact that ‘Free’ really isn’t and that[ we will want to pay to be freed from the mess that is 'Free'. 

category tags: 

computers, internet and social networking, cell phones, smartphones

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/apple-s-walled-garden-bites-wallet-world-free-better

Five technologies from 2018 Aging 2.0 Optimize

Interested in innovation in the age-related market?  You are based in the west coast or need to be there to do other business?  Then you are likely going to attend Aging 2.0’s annual Optimize event this week in San Francisco, where you’ll get to hear Dr. Joseph Coughlin of the MIT Age Lab describe his insights about the Longevity Economy. And you will also have an opportunity to view the pitches for partners, speak with investors, and learn about Aging 2.0 progress in meeting its 2017-identified Grand Challenges.  With that as context, here are five startups exhibiting at Aging 2.0 this week – all material is drawn from the firms' own sites:

• Confetti. "We decided to create a platform that makes it easy to bring people together around life’s most important moments -- from birthdays, to weddings, to anniversaries or retirements -- to honor our past, celebrate the present, and get excited for what lies ahead. The team behind Confetti is part of AARP Innovation Labs, where we come up with new ideas to improve different parts of life. Our products are geared toward people of all ages, and Confetti is one of our first.”  Learn more at GiveConfetti.com.

• Leeo. "Leeo Smart Alert™ works with the smoke, carbon monoxide and continuous tone water alarms that you already have . . . to form a fire and flood prevention dream team. If a smoke, CO or water alarm goes off, Leeo calls you instantly on your phone and tells you what’s happening. If you’re not reachable, Leeo can notify your emergency contact list directly. You or anyone on your list can respond by checking your home or calling 911." Learn more at Leeo.com.

• OneDay. "For senior living communities:  get a branded app, choose the story to create, record your residents answering previously loaded questions. The app then creates a branded movie with music instantly. The movies are automatically uploaded to the department’s own web pages. OneDay is an enabler for senior living communities to engage residents and families in an innovative way, improve resident and employee engagement, and gain a marketing differentiator on resident tours." Learn more at OneDay.

• Somatix. "Precision recognition of physiological and emotional symptoms via simple hand gestures. The Somatix real-time gesture detection platform utilizes sensors built into a range of wearables, predictive analytics and machine learning to passively monitor, remotely track, analyze, and deliver insights and help act on massive volumes of detected gesture data. The platform ultimately facilitates personalized CBT (Cognitive Behavior Therapy) driven health intervention that increases individuals' treatment adherence and helps improve people's lives." Learn more at Somatix.com.

• Seismic. "A fusion of apparel and robotics -- Lightweight, breathable and comfortable; our apparel enables wearers to overcome limitations and achieve their full physical potential. We start by keeping it simple, like getting dressed in the morning, but with a powerful processor and an integrated sensor matrix, our Powered Clothing™ is programmable, tailored to your body and lifestyle. Learn more at myseismic.com.

category tags: 

Boomer-Senior Tech Business

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/five-technologies-2018-aging-20-optimize

Six Health and Aging Technology Blog Posts from October 2018

October – autumn leaves drift down and large events gear up.  Traversing the trade show world, so much tech, so little time. And other shows await, including Aging 2.0 Optimize in California, GSA in Boston, Innovations in Longevity in DC (see you at there!) all ahead in the remains of the year of 2018.  For each of the trade show events, look for startup garages and innovation sections grouped at the back or on the side of convention centers. Study the exhibit halls online if you can’t be there in person.  Show organizers want you to find new companies – and some may be the most innovative ones you encounter in the entire event.  Here are six blog posts from October 2018:

What is Caregiving Technology, Anyway? A term that means what you want it to mean. It's crazy. Search for the term 'caregiving technology.' At the top of the retrieved page – an ad for ClearCare to help you 'improve client and employee management' – sounds like paid (agency) home care. Over at AARP, there is a long list of resources (non-tech) on the AARP caregiving site for family caregivers, who may use paid care. There’s the 2017 AARP reportthat surveys caregivers about what they want from technology -- they are interested in but not currently using.  There’s the Family Caregiver Alliance report that lists technologies from firms, but was last updated in 2013 (perhaps the date of this FCA list).   The National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC/AARP) report is dated 2014 – and focuses on a vision for what caregiving technology should be. Read more here.

TenTips for Launching a Product or Service – October 2018. It’s 2018 and in full sprint to the year-end finish. Soon you will launch a boomer/senior, home health tech product or service, or maybe a caregiver advisory service.  As your company gets ready to travel into battle or a booth this fall with the sound of lively pitches all around, it is time to for you to revisit this guidance. Perhaps sometime soon, your new or existing company will officially launch a new product or service, or perhaps a long-awaited, over-described and much-anticipated offering will finally ship. First read existing content and research reports on your particular market segment.  Look over this updated checklist that continues to hold true – with updated links and references. If necessary, refine tactics. Read more here.

Five Offerings from the Boston Connected Health Conference 2018.  Held each year – but has much changed? The Connected Health Conference is still a Health IT conference, owned by HIMSS, spruced up by the pre-conference Voice Health summit, task forces, and even onstage singing by health tech folk that may wish they were in show business. There were more sessions acknowledging caregiving and even acknowledging aging adults -- as well as gnashing of teeth about non-adoption of technology in healthcare. But many attendees (also exhibitors) seem still to be circling the health care universe from the vantage point of the IT buyer -- health IT consulting, tech vendors seeking health IT customers. And vendors trying to nurture innovation, tackling one not-so-integrated healthcare and engagement process at a time.  New offerings appearing at this event include (material is from the company sites). Read more here.

Help Yelp Serve Families with Information about Nursing Homes. Consider CMS Five Star Rating system and how it ‘serves’ families.  Rant on.  No doubt you know someone who was baffled at how a terrible nursing home gets a 4 or 5 star rating from CMS’s Five Star Rating System, while a good one can appear to have a lower rating, applied from an inspection before management overhaul several years earlier.  Why, you ask? Indeed.  Others have asked as well – noting the obvious missing link, family satisfaction with the nursing home, including dealing with the staff. For starters. Retiring outdated information, next.  Read more here.

Voice First and Health – What’s Notable and Not So Much? You probably knew this – that 2018 was the year of voice tech and healthcare.  Summits were held, experts have declared, pilotswere piloted, partnerships formed, enthusiasm reigned, and so it has gone. As for 2019, according to Sara Holoubek, CEO of Luminary Labs, "expect a proliferation of bad voice experiences."  C​onsider the healthcare experiences we have endured – it’s a good time to consider a new way to interact with the health system. From a technology perspective, what is each players doing to help us use our voice to have a better health and patient engagement experience?   Are any of these initiatives tuned to the needs of older adults? Read more here.

Five New Technologies from Leading Age Philadelphia 2018. From AAHSA to LeadingAge.  In 2010, this association was renamed LeadingAge – from the Association of Homes and Services for the Aging – a mouthful, shortened to AAHSA. As it was at first encounter in 2009, it is an association of faith-based and non-profit senior living and aging-related services. A rhetorical question, does LeadingAge, the association and event organizer, lead in the world of aging services?  Or is it dragged into the future, one which older adults do not necessarily want – and also cannot afford?  From the 2016 event, attended by 6500, attendance had shrunk from 2009’s attending 9000. Meanwhile, the ‘aging in place’ concept is a reality for most older people. A small percent live in nursing homes. Most don’t move to senior living communities, which have been overbuilt in recent years -- and today are only 86% occupied. Read more here.

 

category tags: 

mHealth-Digital Health-Telehealth-Voice Health, Voice First/AI technology, Family caregivers

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/six-health-and-aging-technology-blog-posts-october-2018

Aging in place -- big talk, but do people really believe it?

Who doesn’t want to live in their 'forever' home? After all, AARP has surveyed us for 2018 – staying there is apparently what 76% want, though only 59% expect that they will.  But responders also know that you can’t always get what you want. Concerns included the need for transportation regardless of physical status, ability to stay active in the community, and availability of hospitals nearby (though that 911 call can fail to find us).  And no, ride-sharing and self-driving cars are not viewed as panaceas.  We know many of the reasons older adults will leave their homes – families and the draw of grandchildren pull them nearer; a spouse dies; the home itself is too costly to keep.  

Why doesn’t senior living look like a more viable option?  The senior living industry has been in various stages of denial for years – in good times, overbuilding and in bad times, failing to effectively expand services to those aging in their communities.  Meanwhile, the average $3750/month costs of senior living communities are daunting to a population that may not have saved enough to support that choice. Seniors are aware of well-publicized life expectancy at 65 and 75. Consider a nationwide average $3750 cost (good luck finding an actual cost), that would amount to $675K over 15 years – for one person.

Will we stay -- or will we go?   Assume baby boomers put our proverbial feet down – we just will not leave -- and nothing can make us. What should we have in (or do to) our homes that facilitates ‘aging in place?’ Can a home that is far away from family members really be modified and then outfitted to help us stay there and stay connected? Should it be? The AARP survey reveals hope but uncertainty – and a strong possibility of changing locations. Ironically, that new location may not be moving in with the kids. The growth in 55+ housing is steady – is that where baby boomers will want to go if they can?

Fixing to stay – what enables aging in place? Technology plays a useful but tangential role. Sensors are helpful, fall detection is helpful, video cameras and online connectivity – they are all helpful and may reduce social isolation and loneliness. But as the holidays approach, tickets are bought and everyone seemingly travels. Adult children look at the homes of their parents and think more about their own homes -- and wonder.  Are these homes (ours, theirs) near public transportation, so limited in the suburbs?  Are the homes single-story (desirable, possible), available in 76% of US housing units -- but in few suburban developments?  How about night-time outdoor safety of walkways covered with ice or slippery with rain? What about walking a dog or tripping over the dog inside the house? 

category tags: 

housing, senior living, Boomer-Senior Tech Business

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/aging-place-big-talk-do-people-really-believe-it