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April 2015

Look back at innovation competitions to help older adults

Competitions abound – all need groundwork.  Just a few years ago you might have noticed that there were few business plan competitions for products and services targeting the older adult market (the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit begun by Mary Furlong in 2004 was a rare exception.)  When its Letter of Intent page appeared at the end of 2011, CMS innovation grant applications included technology submissions behind the scenes, in partnership with non-profits and healthcare delivery organizations. Then came the $1 billion round two announced in December 2014 – and with that, multiple other tech solutions were included to help deliver significant changes, including health information exchanges, patient engagement, the emerging field of population health, and today’s CMS reimbursement for telehealth.  With these approvals, CMS effectively laid the groundwork for many of the firms that compete today in health segments.

Identity theft is a big deal -- and it's too late to stop it

Had your identity stolen lately? Oh well, you probably did. A few months ago, California’s Anthem Blue Cross admitted that someone had stolen 80 million health records, complete with name, address, SS # and more. A certain amount of self-congratulation can be found in its letter to the 80+ million: "The information accessed may have included names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, health care ID numbers, home addresses, email addresses, employment information, including income data. We have no reason to believe credit card or banking information was compromised." What a relief. But with the ‘minimal’ data stolen, the thieves got busy and filed for tax refunds from the IRS, which helpfully encourages direct deposit of the refund. TurboTax halted its electronic filing process recently due to likely fraudulent filing. And the IRS, which admits to weak fraud detection tools, will issue refunds as a result of this travesty.  

Can Honor's tech geeks deliver the 2.0 home care agency?

Does the opportunity with home care rest in its technology? Some Silicon Valley fellows think that it is does, and with a cool $20 million raised, they are launching Honor. What is this oddly named thing? What they've said: it's an in-home care agency that will have a smartphone app for the adult child plus a tablet in the care recipient’s home to say "what time the aide is arriving."  Oh, and it seems likely they will have home care aides who are paid better wages, at least in the SF area, where the 'earth revolves around San Jose' – no kidding, that heading is from the San Jose paper. Oh, and did I forget to mention that they will manage a process to help families hire home care aides?

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The accelerating pace of useless technology upgrades

Tech companies want consumers who can be herded forward.  There was the magic of the iPhone 6 and the 6-plus.  By the time those came out, the old iPhones were tired, maybe too slow -- Apple fans were eager, if not desperate for a better device. Then not so long after Samsung introduced its Galaxy S4 in May 2013, it announced the S5 in February 2014. The Samsung Galaxy S6 and the Galaxy Edge (and their updates) showed up this week -- hustled out the door to keep pace with media mega-hype of the Apple Watch. How wonderful and different are the new Samsung gadgets from the S3 and S5?  Wait for it – startup with a finger swipe, a curved edge and again imitating Apple… no removable batteries. Oh, so the new phones have a 12-hour battery life?  Well, you can charge the phone within 15 minutes to get 4 hours of life out of it? Not so good when the day is long.

The PERS industry must do a better job of serving seniors

These are tech transition times for everyone – including seniors and their devices.  In case you didn’t see it, the Pew numbers about smartphone use are out – 27% of the 65+ have smartphones, up from 19% last year. Given the date of that data (from last fall), let’s just assume that this number is actually lower than today's reality.  So why should a PERS reseller or manufacturer care?  First because carriers don’t want to sell feature/clamshell phones any more. They make it difficult to even find them. They are selling smartphones to people who don’t want or use all of the features they have, but they’re buying them anyway because that is what they’re being sold.  In retrospect, Philips Lifeline might have seen the near term PERS future – and it could be a smartphone – and thus an app. And thus -- why have more than one device? And why not pair a tiny pendant or clip to a smartphone? Or make a watch?

Smartphone usage by older adults is up -- why?

Times change, so do phones. One year ago according to the latest from Pew, 18% of the 65+ had a smartphone – today, 27% have them. Why? Well, for one thing, when a phone breaks, smartphones are easy to find in the store as directed by a rep and online, while ‘basic’ phones (Verizon has 6 unique basic phones) are buried under pre-paid plans. AT&T's two unique brands are very difficult to find, with a handful of non-contract Go Phones – found online after wading through a gazillion smartphone choices. Also, 41% of people aged 65-69 are smartphone owners, perhaps side effects of working longer, greater longevity, families with pics, videos, and chats that must be seen NOW. But still, more than 70% of the 41 million 65+ still do not have smartphones. This likely isn’t because of the cost of the plans (43% of smartphone owners pay between $50 and $100) – only 10% of the 65+ are statistically classified as living in poverty.

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