Aging in Place Technology Watch Top Blog Posts in 2014

PERS devices and wearables – what will bring them together? Now that the Washington Post has declared that Apple and Google will solve our health problems, aren’t you relieved? Oh, you’re a bit concerned about your privacy, the fact that all of your outside-of-Facebook web searches are by default accessible to Facebook – that you have to opt out on a completely separate website in order to terminate tracking of this activity?  As you wander around Google, Yahoo or through iTunes, your searches about health topics, those are all now relevant for advertisers as provided by Facebook!  And extra-special, what do you think about the fact that Apple lobbied away any need for FDA approval for anything health-related? Feeling safely healthy now?

Sensor-based home monitoring is a maturing market.  A long time ago (2008) when this website was first launched, the benefits and difficulties of getting home-monitoring technology deployed were discussed. Perhaps families were ignorant about the technology, didn’t want to interfere or could not tell their aging parents what to do. Many observed that lack of knowledge about home monitoring solutions was the number one problem. Or maybe the senior's privacy concern was the problem. Or maybe complexity of installation and the need for an installer was the problem?  Searching the topic of 'home monitoring' on this site reveals a long list of companies launching, announcing, updating, partnering with providers, dealers, insurers -- as well as comments about barriers to adoption.

What do we mean by the word ‘senior’? Well, it depends on where you stand and what you are reading. Seen through the Google Glassy lens of young adults, it’s everyone aged 50+, that is, the AARP market demographic, who might be considered a senior. Or perhaps it is age 65, when Medicare eligibility and public transit discounts appear. Age 65 is also the statistical baseline for longevity projections – 20 more years of life expectancy, with one in four projected to live past 90. Now mull over a new Pew global survey about attitudes on aging -- the US stood out as "one of very few countries where a large plurality of the public believes individuals are primarily responsible for their own well-being in old age." Consider that point and read on.

Five new technologies for aging in place – Summer 2014.  New, newer, and newest startups to help older adults. Typically it has made sense on this site to not discuss companies until they are in the market, in production, with customers and funding.  But crowdfunding has changed that paradigm. Some startups chose to surface through crowd-sourcing campaigns, gaining visibility and ideally some funding. If all goes well,  they gain some funding, credibility and even bug-fixes. And as one executive from Lively observed prior to its launch, they get feet on the street and customers.  In this post, check out a few of these companies that have launched or recently moved onto media and funding notifications. As always, press releases -- with actual text! -- might help, as do notifications through Indigogo, Kickstarter or other funders.

Ten CES (2014) Technologies that could be useful to older adults. Last year, CES in Pajamas, this year CES from the kitchen.  Everyone who is anyone in the tech world wants to be at CES…well, almost everyone. Remember a 2012 health tech article called CES in Pajamas? Check out TelecareAware's analysis of write-ups in The CES of Health or MDDI's note about Aging in Place. And this year, the Forbes article, I, Robot Journalist: Beaming into CES 2014 was a great use of the Beam (from Suitable Technologies) telepresence device, "a motorized stand that looks like an iPad glued to a Segway." The Forbes writer 'wanders' around the International CES show and sort-of elbows her robotic way around to view various booths. The CEO of Suitable Technologies wants to see 10,000 Beams at CES 2015.  Let’s try to imagine that scene -- I bet CES introduces a Beam registration limit to minimize violence on the show floor. (Seriously, you read it here first.)

Five new technologies for Aging in Place, Spring, 2014.  What's new and tech-related for helping older adults? Every few months this site attempts to sweep up and refresh a few of the announcements about technology in the market that can be helpful both to older adults and to those that care for them. These five announcements meet the criteria older adults remain safe, healthy, secure, and well-connected in their homes of choice.

Personal Emergency Response Systems aren’t personal about health. Watching PERS and consumer health tech industries is like watching parallel worlds.  You have to notice. Although offerings are now mobile, they are not moving closer to consumer health tech.  Wander from website to website of the leading players – Philips, Tunstall, ADT, Lifestation, LifeAlert, and so on, in the self-described Medical Alarm industry, regardless of who the company is, services are described and compared in this chart by VRI in the context of the 'emergency' dimension of Personal Emergency Response System/Service.  Okay, you’ve looked over the laundry list of companies in the VRI-crafted chart.

Pew Research underscores the tech isolation of real seniors. The majority of real seniors are not online.   The Pew technology survey is up to date – and it is a reflection that tech, training, and perception of benefit have a ways to go with real seniors – aged 75+. Fewer than half (47%) of the 75-79 age group and 37% of the 80+ are online.  And if they were, most do not have broadband access at home. And among the 65+, the song and dance about ease of use of smart phones and tablets is not resonating – 40% of seniors say that physical challenges make some activities difficult – and for those, even fewer go online. And for all the social pressure and media assumptions about online use, non-users do not believe they are at a real disadvantage.

Five New Technologies for Aging in Place – Jan-Feb 2014. The start of a new year -- it extends past CES!  Let's remind ourselves -- press releases matter. As you know by now, becoming quiet about a firm's products and offerings is bad business practice – silence is assumed to be a bad sign – and the aging dates of content on websites is even worse. That’s because the technology market waits for no man – or woman. And to their PR credit, tech companies get that. So in the past few months new versions and offerings of technology solutions have been swept up in press releases on this site – perhaps missed by readers, so here they are, extracted into a single blog post. As has been the case previously, all of the text is extracted from the announcements by the technology firms themselves.