AgeTech

For anyone who is still wondering whether there is a business out there in aging-related products and services, forward this item from today's NY Times to them.  Royal Philips, the Dutch industrial giant (approximately $37.5 billion in revenue per year), is convinced that the 'world is getting older.' A company shrinking by shedding businesses and 30% revenue, Philips is instead buying and building up other growth business areas, including energy-saving lightbulbs, but also its Lifeline PERS business for home and healthcare monitoring.

I want to believe. It's a great idea to prevent businesses with sketchy or even criminal backgrounds from defrauding or harming seniors.

This is a crazy idea for the gift-giving season, I know. But I just got off the phone with Landel -- the maker of Mailbug, a single-purpose e-mail appliance for the PC-less (or PC-useless) home.  Wouldn't it just be a crazy idea this holiday season if baby boomers who can afford to do it gave a suite of communication products to their PC-less parents and in-laws?

With my ombudsman hat on yesterday, I spent a morning doing an assessment of an Assisted Living Facility. As is usually the case, the nurses showed us a thick patient chart book with its hand-written status observations, penciled medication tracking dosage X's and yellowed-out discontinued drugs.

I have been searching the web for robots that could be useful to seniors -- today. Yeah, I know that's a tall order. So much research, so few commercial products, and I really don't want to count the companion toy dogs. And while vacuum cleaners and floor washers are interesting and available through Target, they're not quite what I had in mind for helping seniors stay safely in their homes. And the research programs, funded by every company (including Toyota, Sony, etc., etc. and its mother, don't seem to have commercial product near ready. 

The aging in place wave has hit the upscale community of Coral Gables in Miami. It's a well intentioned but inadequate concept despite its promise.  Coral Gables@Home is being launched as a non-profit which will cost members an introductory $500 annual fee for the first 100 enrolled.

Builders have little interest in changing their home-design practices to accomodate seniors -- unless pressured by consumers who want their homes designed that way, of course.  In fact, in Florida, universal design standards are not part of the building code for new buildings, although contractors can be certified in it as well as becoming

Juxtapose this.  1) There's a modest trend towards Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs), which are

A market research firm, SharpBrains, which bills itself as "The Brain Fitness Authority," has posted a product evaluation checklist for determining whether a brain or cognitive fitness software product  is the 'right' product for you. By the way, SharpBrains estimates this software market was $225 million in 2007.