Caregiving in the US 2025 – More tech, but not as much as caregivers could use

This report is published every five years – and it is (still) dismaying.  The new report, Caregiving in the US 2025, was published this week. The previous report was surveyed in 2020. The bottom line of it is the sheer number of adults (63 million) who provide care to an adult family member or child with a medical condition or disability in the past 12 months. Most of this care is unpaid.  Some are leveraging state or national programs to pay family caregivers, and one-third, likely higher income, hire outside help. The report’s focus is on the 59 million who provide care for an adult. So what has changed in terms of tech use? If usage penetration is a metric, there is some progress. For example:

• Remote monitoring jumped from 13 percent use in 2020 to 25 percent in 2025. Most state Medicaid programs cover Remote Patient Monitoring.   
• Financial software. Thirty-nine percent of caregivers use digital tools to manage care recipients’ finances (up from 35% in 2020).
• Assistive devices for independence. One in five caregivers use assistive devices to support their recipient’s independence (20 percent up from 17% in 2020).  One presumes these are wearables (like a PERS pendant or watch) or fall detection technology, though the report does not specify.
• Electronic task lists and schedules. A similar proportion uses electronic task lists and schedules for care management (19 percent, up from 14% in 2020). Younger caregivers, compared with caregivers over 50, more readily embrace technology solutions like remote monitoring (30 percent vs. 22 percent) and digital organizational tools like electronic lists or spreadsheets (22 percent vs. 17 percent).
• Health records. Four in 10 family caregivers now report using technology or software to track their recipient’s personal health records (41 percent, up from 30 percent in 2020), a figure that is higher among female caregivers (43 percent) compared with male caregivers (38 percent).

With all of the remote monitoring tech in the market today, what is the barrier?  Consider how many remote monitoring options there are today -- between health status, motion detection, fall detection, GPS tracking for dementia, and more.  Are family caregivers aware of these choices?  Whose role is it to educate family caregivers on the variety of tech options out there?  Perhaps AARP, which sponsored the Caregiving in the US Survey, could also reference their own website, one of several, on how smart home technology can make life easier for older adults and caregivers?

Smartphone ownership has shot up in five years.  The report does not explicitly reflect that.  Today 90% of cellphones are smartphones, and even the lagging data from Pew Research indicates more than 80% of the 65+ population has one.  Aside from all of their personally useful features, smartphones enable texting and online communication among family caregivers and recipients. And they also enable self-tracking of health conditions, including trending over time. Before this report is published again in five years, this reality needs to be used as a baseline.