March 2017

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.

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+.

As we approach the date for the upcoming week of March 20-24 in Chicago, it is worth noting a few trends. The marketplace of products and services today is still fragmented, with ever-shifting cottage industries comprised largely of startups, challenged by channel complexity and end user resistance.  But with fragments assembled into an overall puzzle, this business for boomers and beyond has been estimated by some to grow to $20 billion by 2020 or even $30 billion by 2017.  The larger market will be based on growing boomer awareness and aging. It will be strikingly different from today – fueled the growing availability of in-car technology, mobile PERS health integration, wearable fitness and health devices, in-home ‘Voice First’ IoT hubs and smart phone apps. In particular: