From that age-friendly government, so here to help.Rant on. I thought the last word had been said about the idiocy of cutting off paper documents before the rest of the older population was online. But no, yesterday's Washington Post ran an article describing the lobbying group, Paperoptions.org. Sneered the Post -- it is funded by envelope manufacturers! -- as being a thorn in the side of the administration’s move to push all remaining documents online, regardless of citizenry ability to access those documents. "The glitzy new thing is to be pro-technology," said John Runyan, Consumers for Paper Options’ executive director. "But a lot of government agencies are saying, 'We’re going electronic and the heck with it.'"
The 2014 Positive Aging Conference shines a light on innovation. At the just-held Conference on Positive Aging in Sarasota, FL, the seventh in its history, to the four themes Wellness, Creativity, Transitions and Community, the conference added a new theme, Technology. The conference’s offerings are designed primarily for the Sarasota County attendees, a population of older adults in the region who are the focus of the work of the Institute of the Ages. This year, the Institute of the Ages, led by CEO Tom Esselman, has partnered with InnovateLTC, CEO John Reinhart, an accelerator for new businesses serving the age-related market segments. That partnership enables a willing and able test audience from Sarasota to find willing and eager businesses looking for pilots of their products and services.
While many people have a mental picture of an entrepreneur as a hip twenty-something working on the next billion dollar tech company, the fact is that entrepreneurial activity is growing fastest among Americans aged 55 – 64, and people over the age of 65 have the highest rate of self-employment in the country. The factors influencing Baby Boomers and seniors to consider launching their own enterprises vary from economic necessity to pursuit of a lifelong dream. Discovering exactly which path to take in becoming an entrepreneur or changing a career later in life, however, can be daunting.
A long holiday stretch ends. No, I’m not talking about Christmas decorations in shopping malls. The media frenzy that was CES 2014 may soon wane away, although post mortems and predictions persist. So let’s review: there were Silvers Summit exhibitors (6) and then there was Digital Health (77). For CES health-related overall, count 170 per Mobile Health News – and that includes "e-Cigarette makers that categorized themselves as Digital Health." See one of a few cynical posts – where we can find a new word -- track-a-holism -- and a new slogan -- "sitting is the new smoking." But in the Digital Health exhibit list, note the presence of GrandCare and Independa – two long-standing players in what could have been categorized at a different event as senior technology.
