AgeTech

The 2024 media message touts aging in place. It’s what everyone wants to do, even those with homes that are difficult to navigate, long distances from family, and must have major modifications to enable remaining there. Yet you read this message nearly every week  -- Next Avenue lauds the benefits, sponsored by Lively from Best Buy Health.  Fortune tests home monitoring systems they say are critical to Aging in Place.  And USA Today publishes a survey that underscores the desire to age in place. So what is the market of tech that will support this goal?  AARP calls it AgeTech – and has a startup directory of new entrants, including categories of health, mobility, caregiving and more.  But that is a list, not a solution.

Older adults today are beneficiaries of widespread tech access. And it really does fulfill the 2011 prediction in the AARP report, Connected Living for Social Aging.  Broad access to online capabilities was imagined by experts when that report was written.  They knew that someday high speed Internet access, widespread use of social networks, online access to food delivery, health appointments, shopping, holding video gatherings with families at holidays – all taken for granted now, but then it was just a dream. The good news is that most older adults take advantage of these and many capabilities today. Internet access today is being delivered out to remote rural areas – and most of the 65+ will soon be connected. Then what is the next quality of life frontier for older adults?  

The month of May -- and the hostility about AI overflowed.  Given the pace of change in AI technology – both the software and its rate of adoption – it’s curious that recently the Wall Street Journal published an aging survey about what customers don’t use and/or like about chatbots. These observations include the usual: ‘hallucinated’ answers; lack of customer awareness that they are talking to a chatbot (really???); the chatbot is too nosy. Or it asked too many questions; or couldn’t handle two questions. Which would make this article, like much of media coverage of AI, sound negative. Too late, adoption happened anyway. This is a commentary, perhaps, on the nature of news media in general, who either are mirroring the AI skepticism in the public, or more typically promoting it. But clearly with chatbot adoption, the public is paying new attention. Sigh.  Here are the four blog posts from May, 2024:

The decline of our tech experience was slow – it was barely noticeable for a while. Then device proliferation in homes – and the corresponding frustration became too obvious to miss. An AARP report notes, "No one prefers badly designed, over-complicated products." Yet that's what we get. Despite preferences, surveys show that today’s user experience for older adults is more problematic than ever. All are confronted with buggy software and frequent bug fix releases, such as a problem on iPhones that an embarrassed Apple redirected software work towards fixing. At the same time, innovation in new categories like Conversational and GenAI, machine learning and prediction have emerged and can help improve experiences if deployed properly. Over the next five years, it is highly likely that:

Aging in place -- sounds good, but for many, it won't work.  The optimistic older adulta like their home -- and they tell survey firms that they're going to stay.  We've heard this before.  Ironically, in those days, it may have been a practical idea -- but as older adults age into the years in which they need care, the rising cost of the care they need may outpace their ability to pay, so what then? Family members help out if there are any, if they can, if they're nearby, and if they are willing.  A lot of ifs.  For the rest, we are entering a period in which more creative options will be needed and some old words, like 'roommates' and 'co-housing' will resurface.