Laurie Orlov's blog

April -- a veritable shower of data, press announcements, and pitches. It was a short but information-filled month of events, announcements, pitches.  The month marked our first foray into the American Community Survey Census data about technology usage of older adults. Much more is possible with this data – including greater inspection of housing, family structure, income as correlated with technology interest (including telehealth).  Each of the April blog posts can be (re)read in full by clicking on the paragraph heading.   

In 2017, has telehealth and remotely-delivered care evolved? Compared to our published research dated 2011, times may have changed. As surveys have indicated, the healthcare industry is interested and more committed to mainstream use of telehealth technologies.  And telehealth vendors want to help doctors and patients gain mutual benefit of care provided at home versus hospital, especially to lower care delivery costs; augment care for patients in locations far from a specialist or during off-hours; and continue growing the ability of patients and families to self-monitor chronic disease.  In 2016, CMS published a list of covered telehealth services, and no doubt commitment to cost reductions (and reimbursements) in the coming years will result in an expanded list and further industry commitment.  Perhaps ATA's smaller conference will evolve to become part of other sets of conferences, like Connected Health in Boston or part of the ever-growing HiMSS conference collection.

Pitch events precede clarity of offering which precedes... Hopefully the best pitches of best offerings will be funded. But that funding is linked to detailed criteria (see the Link-age Ventures criteria as an example.)  Or investment history, as with the five Generator Ventures, can be viewed online.  Startups know that first multiple pitch events will smooth rough edges of the pitch and help refine the offering itself.  For example, one year ago note that GoGoGrandparent started as telephone-based way to call Uber for, sigh, the founder’s grandmother, now refined as a nationwide “services that help families take better care of older adults.” Pitches represent a single step in this process for obtaining feedback, scoping markets, seeking seed funding, later stage rounds -- ultimately scaling the offering into long-term viability, with referrers, resellers, and revenue.  With that as context, consider these three pitch events.

AARP’s Innovation 50+ Live Pitch starts today – what's new?  This marathon tried to put 20 pounds of entrants (culled from many more) into the 10-pound bag of a two-day pitch event across two broad categories. So following this trend towards compression, we will leave FinTech to others and just focus on the Caregiving Health Technology firms. While the pitch may be fresh, some, as noted, may not be new. Placed in context by taking note of what’s in (or was in) market and similar to these finalists. In the alphabetical order presented and updated with winners noted -- link to available websites or descriptions -- minus Twitter handle:  

Pundits perpetuate the myth of non-use of so-called caregiver technology. [Rant on.] According to AARP, 40 million caregivers are taking care of an older, sicker person -- so says an oft-quoted 2013 AARP Public Policy Report statistic. A different AARP/Catalyst 2016 survey asserts only 7% of these caregivers use technology to help them. What is the 'technology' they won't use? And what is the theory as to why they won’t? Says Jeff Makowka of AARP: "Since many such caregivers also hold down regular jobs, they simply don’t have time to try some new technology." But if they’re working (or of working age), three-fourths of them have smartphones. And given the data-hogging nature of smartphones, all are fairly new. But wait, he also cited an example of an Amazon Echo as deployed for a family member with dementia -- enabling endless repetition of questions like 'What time is it?' etc. Okay, we have to ask, is the Echo a 'caregiving technology?' How about Facebook, described as a caregiver 'mecca'? Do survey respondents consider those technologies when asked?

Market sizing, trending, and targeting all depend on data.  Marketers understand this – and their sources, Nielsen, Pew Research and AARP have, for many years, provided data food for marketers. And so every tech company ever launched builds its business case on tech adoption trends (and gaps) derived from these sources.  So what’s the survey population makeup? Consider Nielsen (global, online, n=30,000); Pew Internet use (US, 2015 n=3004); and AARP (US, 2016, n=1500).  These are all declared to be statistically valid samples. But what if the sample size was 3.5 million households, comprising 1% of the US population, as was the case in the last three years of American Community Surveys (ACS) as collected by the US Census Bureau? 

March madness – a plethora of posts – a newsletter recapping them. So many topics mandated a discussion, some analysis or insight.  So the unusually long month of March meant an unusually long list of seven blog posts, including several involving examinations of data and new terminology (the paid Caregiver Support Ratio (pCSR), for example)  that invite scrutiny and can be very useful for companies in the age-related market segments.  As March winds to a close, here are the month’s posts, of particular use to those who didn’t see them at the time of posting – each of these is summarized with the full link in the heading.

Aging in America – hosting innovators and technologists for helping older adults.  The conference seesaws between west coasts (San Francisco 2018) and the windy city of Chicago, where it was this year – offering up a full program of sessions across the week of March 20-24. Bookending this conference, which offers Continuing Education Units (CEUs) for social service professionals, was What's Next Boomer Summit and the Aging 2.0 Chicago Pitch Event.  The Pitch winner was i65, a tool to help professionals provide guidance on Medicare. That event also included TeleCalm – an intriguing telephone service to help block unwanted calls, including a tool for caregivers to create a trusted list of callers.

On the positive side, smartphone ownership for older adults is up. You have seen older people with their smartphones – they’re in concert halls and restaurants staring at their screens, fascinated -- scrolling through emails, studying photos, watching videos, seated next to other 80-somethings, who might be envious, texting on their very, uh, compact feature phones. Says Pew Research of their 2016 survey data: 42% of the 65+ population have smartphones.  Not surprisingly, only 7% of that population fit the Pew definition of smartphone dependent -- that is 'reliant on their smartphone for Internet access.'  Juxtaposed with Pew’s tracked history of Internet access over 15 years, for the 65+ population, as of 2016, 64% of these smartphone owners are users of the Internet.

Consider the Gallup-Healthways survey about community well-being.  Naples, Florida, is at the top. Really? Perhaps this caught your eye last week when you saw the Gallup survey about well-being.  For those who missed it, the survey ranked well-being of adults 18 and older in a community (town) by specific factors -- Purpose, Social, Financial, Community, and Physical.  At the highest level, Naples was followed by the town of Barnstable on Cape Cod. Consider that the attribute ‘Physical,’ for example, meant “Having good health and enough energy to get things done daily.” So look past the survey. These towns are comparatively wealthy by national measures -- the median income for a household in Naples is $66K and for those over age 75, it is $71K.  For Barnstable, median income is $62.1K – and note that 20% of the Barnstable population is 65+, higher than the 135 national percentage. In Naples, the median age is 60 and an eye-popping 42% of the population is aged 65+.