This website posts press releases – they tell a partnership story.  Press releases are pervasive – and I read them either because they’re sent to me (good idea) or they show up in my Google Alerts. Posted under ‘Vendor Press Releases’ on the site, they are tagged with terms that match the content so that web and site searches will find them. This site has been operational for over 2 years, so there are plenty – and a chance to think about staying power and persistence of the vendors who have come – and gone – along the way. Looking back to 2009, partnership announcements prevail – agreements to promote a vendor’s product, to make it available for constituents, and to resell.  Many of these agreements are just that, handshakes with press releases – and don’t necessarily result in more products sold through to end customers. But of course they create visibility and credibility via the partnered organization for a vendor that may be small and new.

Read it and weep -- the conundrum of home health tech. The large (130 pages) Healthy@Home 2.0 report written by Linda Barrett released on Friday by AARP shows several dimensions of market self-delusion, not the least of which is the perspective of the 940 seniors age 65+. Although they have no doubt seen the world around them go from the happy-go-lucky period of the 2007 survey to a not-so-great world in 2010, what they want is for things to 'stay the same', relying on "a lot of luck", a "good attitude" and "hope". Amazingly, most say they do not need to make any changes to their home within the next 5 years. They're mostly in good shape -- but 27% of them have limits on physical activities, 32% have low vision or hearing impairment, and nearly 1 out of 5 reported their health as fair or poor. Meanwhile fewer than 20% are using any home safety technologies, including an alarm system (!); and fewer than 10% use any personal health and wellness technologies mentioned in the survey. These include medication dispensing (described to responders as an electronic pill box), medication management (communicates information to a provider), or a home-based transmitting self-care device for blood pressure readings or diabetes results.

Cathedral builders still wanted.  Nearly three years ago, in my naive tiptoeing into the tech market for aging in place, I wrote a dismayed blog post about how so many universities have age-related research programs that design and then evaluate efficacy of technology and older adults -- and then disappear when the students move on. Despite a then-slumping economy since October 2008 when that was written, there are still plenty of research programs that live on (see MIT AgeLab), studies have been done to prove efficacy and effectiveness of technologies to help people age in their own homes. So here's another research effort, this time through the University of Missouri and an associated independent living complex called Tiger Place. Nice work has been done to validate that passive sensor technology in conjunction with nurse care coordination can help keep at-risk seniors out of nursing homes (not unlike the Philadelphia PACE project with Healthsense). Intellectual property commercialization into products is not part of the Missouri project, however. In my conversation with lead researcher Marilyn Rantz, she noted her hope that prospective commercial vendors will come forth to license the AgingMO work for future products.