Big tech – from simple tools to cynicism and hapless users

Reading about big tech controversies can make you sigh.  Rant on. You may remember when the browser arrived.  Maybe you knew about Mosaic in 1993 or Netscape Navigator in 1994.  But you probably did not try them unless you were a geek -- because there wasn’t much to look at then on the so-called World-wide-Web.  Apple’s Safari did not appear until 2003 and Google Chrome in 2008 – eventually these dominated the browser market, though three cheers for the existence of privacy-oriented browser Brave (2016) and search tool DuckDuckGo (2008). No doubt both will disappear into acquisitions. As for social media, things really got going with AOL Instant Messenger in 1993 -- then all was pretty quiet until 2003-4, when LinkedIn, MySpace, Skype, and Facebook all arrived. 

What you saw was what you got.  All these tools were initially innocuous, before tracking our behavior online became pervasive and profitable. Then came Twitter in 2006.  And thus the online megaphone was born. Purportedly useful as a business tool, the user is expected to sort out useful marketing messages among the claptrap. Did I want to know that Beyoncé was going to release a visual album? Uh, was I shown that because of one of my tweets about tech in nursing homes?  And who knew that political reporting would devolve into reporting the tweets of politicians? As for Facebook?  Its original intent was to enable visitors to compare two female student pictures side by side and let them decide who was more attractive." How charming. Thus it was a short hop to being used by teens to torment other teens. And threaten people and according to some, enable terrorists.  

All the online world’s a stage.  Even business-oriented folks who use some of the current tools can’t help themselves – with so-called news feeds intermingled among a cacophony of product news and announcement posts, they must also weigh in by re-tweeting or ‘liking’ (a stupid term) something that some wannabe megaphone has endorsed. Twitter's Microblogging’ (such a flawed term!) has become a home for long paragraphs comprised of three words and 19 hashtags. The day that Twitter expanded the number of characters to 280 was a sad day.  Why’d they do it? It ‘allowed users to express more of their thoughts without running out of room to tweet.’ Sigh.

What went wrong?   And gradually things got out of hand, leading to talk (that’s all) of breaking up companies that have gotten too powerful. The use of Twitter became intertwined with politics (including internal work politics) which has led to people losing jobs, to death threats, led to tweet flagging and reporting sensitive media. And that’s just Twitter. Google search ranking has generated some very-public battles, as with Yelp and led to numerous lawsuits -- including one about tracking you when you are  searching in ‘private’ mode, another oxymoron. And last (for this post anyway), there’s Google's YouTube and its so-called content oversight.  In terms of videos posted online, who competes with YouTube, anyway? Rant off.

category tags: 

social media, computers, internet and social networking

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/big-tech-simple-tools-cynicism-and-hapless-users

What use is a PERS smart watch without a call center?

You see PERS news releases on occasion. PERS -- Personal Emergency Response System -- is a long-time market dominated by pendants worn around the neck. Recently Parks Associates sized the PERS market to be $1.1 billion by 2024 -- others think it is a $3.1 billion market today. Also early in the year, Vidapoint was announced as a 'global' low cost offering. LifeStation announced Mobile LTE, small and fast, a pendant linked to a sizable 24-hour call center.  Then in April, Verizon does it again, launches a PERS, this time a smart watch offering, called the Care Smart Watch for seniors.   Let us remember Verizon’s last short attention span for this space. Its Sureresponse™ PERS pendant was new in this research conducted in 2012. The quotes are from executive Jonathan Hinds who departed in 2014, not coincidentally when Verizon stopped selling it. Sureresponse was mostly erased from the Internet by 2016, except for user documentation,  online reviews, some not so hot.     

The new Verizon drops the 'sure' in Sureresponse.  At $149, no monthly service fee, the watch is released without an associated call center or a guaranteed responder network. This may be a first pass that precedes a future call center deal – last time it was VRI, which today markets its response services as VRIcares.  Perhaps its current market landscape has a set of PERS call center players already networked.  In any event, the user manual for Sureresponse is still around and promises to "connect you to assistance every hour of every day." That statement has no connection to today's Care Smart Watch for seniors.

For older adults in need, they need to call someone.  That someone should not be a relative. These non-professional ‘care circles’ are comprised of people who might be traveling, at dinner (with other relatives), or just plain unreachable. The average PERS wearer is still an 82-year-old woman, likely living alone, which is why PERS devices are useful in the first place. The 24x7 call center staff has people who are trained in triaging the severity of a problem, clarifying whether there is an emergency, or just having a conversation with a lonely individual who may not have spoken to anyone else that day or week.

Without a call center, a 'PERS' smart watch is just a watch.  A care watch for 'Seniors' – sounds good – but what’s a senior? In 2014, the year Verizon stopped selling Sure Response, this blog coined the term 'Real Senior' to mean those aged 75+, half women living alone, likely not working, having one or more chronic conditions, including the possibilities of hearing loss, vision issues.  The Real Senior (or family member) should expect a PERS watch to include a monitoring service – for example, the MobileHelp Smart,  the Medical Guardian Smart Watch, the FallCall Lite App (for Apple Watch), or UnaliWear’s voice-enabled Kanega watch.  And removing the watch feature, various wrist-worn wearables have fall detection and a call center – such as Alert1's device or the Lively Wearable 2 (used with smartphone). And Verizon should get with the program and partner with a call center to deliver what it claims the Care Smart Watch to be.

category tags: 

Mobile PERS, PERS, Seniors, Boomer-Senior Tech Business

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/what-use-pers-smart-watch-without-call-center

The growth of telehealth is a plus for seniors – if they can use it

Telehealth – the genie is out of the bottle.  In March, the government announced expansion of telehealth access, noting that it would raise the reimbursement rate for telehealth visits during the Covid-19 pandemic to match the doctor’s rate for in person visits, as Seema Verma, the head of CMS noted: ‘the genie was let out of the bottle’ and won’t likely be put back in. The regulatory change enabled "the use of smartphones, video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, and messaging services like WhatsApp; and the ability to provide care across state lines in 48 states."

Technology companies have stepped up to fill in some of the access gaps.  During April, numerous senior living communities ramped up tech connections for older adults. In May, Google gave 1000 Nest Hub Max devices to residents in seven Merrill Gardens communities in Washington State.  Then in June, Amazon and K4Connect began an initiative to distribute 8000 Echo Dots to residents in 40 West Coast independent and assisted living communities.  More technology changes have followed and are anticipated moving forward.

Technology Adoption – Pew Research. Their latest surveys about smartphone and broadband, as with the Caregiver study, were completed in 2019. Pew’s smartphone ownership for the 65+ was at 53%, though ownership of a cellphone for that group was at 91%. That number is likely to jump up the next time the survey is done, if only because stores primarily display smartphones, and mostly iPhones. BestBuy is the store exception to that rule as the parent company of GreatCall, with its smartphone, which from a price point and easy-to-read screen, is a deal compared to an iPhone. As for broadband adoption, 73% of the 65+ in the last survey in 2019 were broadband users, though likely fewer in the upper age decades.

Technology Adoption -- AARP. The AARP Research survey of older adults was completed in 2019, published in early 2020.  It found a larger percentage in the older age ranges using technology. Their 776-person sample of those aged 70+ showed 62% owning smartphones, and smaller percentages with tablets (40%), with fewer than 20% having any of smart homes or wearables or home assistants.

Turn these numbers around – there’s room for improvement.  Per Pew, 37% of the 65+ do not own smartphones. According to AARP 38% of the 70+ do not have smartphones. As for broadband or high enough speed access to do much of anything online, 27% do not have it according to Pew.  The odds are that most assisted living and nursing homes did not receive donated devices for residents.  So how does telehealth become useful for these sizable gaps? Who or what makes that happen?

category tags: 

Telehealth-RPM-Voice Health, Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF), senior living, Boomer-Senior Tech Business

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/growth-telehealth-plus-seniors-if-they-can-use-it

PACE in Action (June 2020)

In some communities, like Philadelphia, PACE is known as Living Independently for Elders (LIFE). To watch the InnovAge LIFE in Action video, click here: https://youtu.be/X2DARBK7tM8

from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGfB2ZtiiIA

Will technology become standard in nursing homes and senior living communities?

The articles are beginning to appear here and there.  Some are talking about their own increasing use of technology in their nursing homes. Others are discussing the race to enable ‘televisits’ -- noting outreach from AARP to CMS to boost the requirement for enabling technology in nursing homes.  And numerous other articles have appeared that showed nursing homes receiving donations of technology. The State of Florida gave tablets to 150 nursing homes. The attorney general of Massachusetts supplied 750 tablets to nursing home residents. And Texas provided $3000 per Texas nursing home for tablets, webcams, and headphones. The pictures associated with some of these introductions of technology were bleak. Fortunately, some states are now allowing families to visit residents in designated areas outside.

Ending the era of no-tech to at least some tech.  The lockdown visitation rules were terrible for residents. But they also revealed gaps of capability in senior-focused communities. These may have revealed -- like the AARP recent survey of the 70+ age group -- the lack of adoption of devices and tech among the oldest. Banning families and visitors may have exposed the role visiting families play in care. And the role of volunteers who bring in activities, the lack of technology access for residents, including broadband/Wi-Fi for families to connect with residents, the difficulty of providing telehealth services in these environments.  These issues that will only be better understood as senior housing communities are surveyed and it is possible to figure out what policy changes have made a difference.

When the crisis has passed, what will the differences be in terms of tech in senior living?  Let’s assume that the tablet distribution initiative takes off – or nursing homes also are recipients of 8000 Echo Dot devices – as K4Connect did. Many other contributions were likely made of other devices not noted in press releases or media. One day in the future the tech surveys are conducted and from a technology perspective, it is a whole new day in senior care.  What will be different in that year, sooner or later?

Nursing homes and senior living communities will all have Wi-Fi for residents.  And from there, all else tech-wise may become possible. Let’s imagine a scenario here: “Following discharge from the hospital after hip replacement, Mrs. Smith is brought by ambulance to the rehab wing of a local skilled nursing facility. Her family has already notified the community to activate her in-room Wi-Fi (an extra charge). When she is settled comfortably after dinner, she has a Facetime session (launched by her son) with grandchildren using her tablet that sits on her tray table.  After that, the caregiving aide speaks a music request to the Echo Dot (or Google Mini) also remotely set up by her family, and Mrs. Smith nods off to sleep.  The next day, she speaks her menu requests for lunch and dinner and is notified by the in-community reminder system that she has scheduled rehab in the afternoon at 2.   Later that day, she also listens to music, plays a game on her tablet, chats with her relatives, is taken to rehab, listens to an online book, and later participates in a community-wide in-room activity from her tablet.”  Why not?  And perhaps this is already possible in some place you know about.

category tags: 

Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF), Seniors, senior living, seniors and aging policy

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/will-technology-become-standard-nursing-homes-and-senior-living-communities

Consider tech adoption trends to contemplate what might be next

Will results change when older adults are surveyed later this year? So we know that ‘remote care’ and ‘caring’ in its various forms, including telehealth, seem to be heating up as a priority, whether for senior living organizations, families, healthcare provider organizations.  It's putting more emphasis on the need for home healthcare and home care, especially in times in which the care workers hesitate to enter a home and which families are locked down and not visiting.  Here is where we were on technology adoption at the start of the pandemic, and the wave of telehealth interest heated up.  As one tech company told me, a one-year-pipeline compressed into a month of demand.  And a plethora of companies raised their hands to offer their engagement technology for free.  So if this is the baseline of adoption, what’s next when the surveys come around again?

Health-related technology adoption. Is telehealth done, long live healthcare?  McKinsey consumer sentiments research indicates 35% of home healthcare visits post-COVID could become virtual visits, using remote care technologies that will be HIPAA compliant, noting that three-fourths of consumers surveyed are interested.   In addition, telehealth visits scaled 175 times the pre-COVID volume, no doubt due to the obvious – people could not go to the doctors’ office and for older adults, Medicare began to reimburse telehealth at the same rate as in-person.  The latter is likely to be a genie that will not go back into the bottle, as an interview with CMS’ Seema Verma indicates.

Caregiving Technology Adoption.  The adoption of technology among caregivers is surprising low, per this 2020 Caregiving in the US online survey of 1392 caregivers collected in 2019 and puzzlingly low compared to the 10-year-old survey from 2009. Technologies surveyed included: tracking a care recipient’s finances or personal health records; use of assistive devices; electronic lists or spreadsheets to track activities; or checking in on a care recipient using a remote monitoring app or video.  Only 53% of responders had ‘used any of these’ – and the percentage using technology to track care recipient finances (35%) or health records (30%) was quite low. As for searching online, “caregivers most commonly go online to find more actual, hands-on help: searching for services, aides, facilities, or other help (32 percent).”   

Technology Adoption – Pew Research.  Their latest surveys about smartphone and broadband, as with the Caregiver study, were completed in 2019. Pew’s smartphone ownership for the 65+ was at 53%, though ownership of a cellphone for that group was at 91%.  That number is likely to jump up the next time the survey is done, if only because stores primarily display smartphones, and mostly iPhones.  BestBuy is the store exception to that rule as the parent company of GreatCall, with its smartphone, which from a price point and easy-to-read screen, is a deal compared to an iPhone. As for broadband adoption, 73% of the 65+ in the last survey in 2019 were broadband users, though likely fewer in the upper age decades.

Technology Adoption -- AARP. The AARP Research survey of older adults was completed in 2019, published in early 2020 as well and found a larger percentage in the older age (age 70+, good for them!) ranges using technology. Their 776-person sample of those aged 70+ showed 62% owning smartphones, and smaller percentages with tablets (40%), with fewer than 20% having any of smart homes or wearables or home assistants.

category tags: 

Telehealth-RPM-Voice Health, Boomer-Senior Tech Business, Family caregivers

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from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.ageinplacetech.com/blog/consider-tech-adoption-trends-contemplate-what-might-be-next

InnovAge PACE TV Spot

InnovAge helps seniors live life independently, for as long as possible through the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).

from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-W3M31Ob9U

InnovAge LIFE TV Spot

InnovAge helps seniors live life independently, for as long as possible through the LIFE, known nationally as the Program of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE).

from Tips For Aging In Place https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0tfDGPhlRs