International CES 2015 – overwhelming at every turn. What a relief -- it's over. International CES was an extremely difficult venue to sort into useful categories – the Sands Exhibition Hall (part of Tech West) was filled with every health-related variant of wearable, fitness, and lifestyle improvement like Belty that expands as you eat more – as well as Eureka Park. Watch those fit women peddling bikes and running on treadmills, that distance-measured basketball jump shot, and of course -- the pet-related tracker with the large and tippy stuffed dog. And they don’t call it International for nothing – walking by, saw (or heard) French entrepreneurs (22% of all startups at CES), the Israeli pavilion, Italian, Spanish, German, and of course, Chinese and Japanese. It is an overwhelming show, not for the faint of heart or foot, and that’s just to get from hotels to conferences and exhibits.
So you want to launch a boomer/senior, home health tech product or service. As your new company gets ready to travel into battle at mHealth, CES, and all those 2015 launch events to-be-named-later, it is time to for you to revisit this guidance. Perhaps some time soon, your new or existing company will officially launch a new product or service, or perhaps a long-awaited, over-described and much-anticipated offering will finally ship. Here is a checklist that continues to hold true – with a few links that are merely examples:
Panasonic Corporation of North America has announced it will launch On4TodayTM, a tablet-based telehealth service, in November. The new Health and Wellness Solutions business group is part of Panasonic's ongoing business transformation and will deliver technology solutions to the healthcare market. The group's first offering - On4TodayTM - is a non-clinical telehealth service provided to long-term care and assisted living facilities.
Startup mania is one thing -- but bigger companies like tech too. AARP has a Longevity Network to encourage startups and an updated market overview report -- and funds are blossoming -- see Linkage Ventures and Aging 2.0. Then there's the StartUp Health billions and billions, and RockHealth (more billions) -- yada yada yada. With all of that money flowing and hype flowering around startup wannabes, who knows what other incubators, accelerators, and motivators in 2015 are ahead? The new year starts off at CES in Las Vegas -- will it bring new companies to light that are focused on seniors? Meanwhile way back here in what's left of 2014, a number of firms that are NOT startups by any definition have recently announced new offerings -- each of these acknowledges and encourages seniors to use cell phone, tablet, and smartphone technology today. List is alphabetical, and all content is taken from press announcements and/or the organizations' own websites.
Washington, D.C., Sept. 4, 2014 — AARP (https://www.aarp.org/), the nation’s largest advocate for 76 million baby boomers, today announced RealPad, a first of its kind tablet device built to address the specific needs of 70 million Americans 50+ who are yet to fully embrace tablet technology to help them stay connected.
Most might not compare -- but the timing seems right. You may have read the story about Robin Williams' daughter Zelda dropping off Twitter due to trash-posting trolls -- not the first, in fact, that have been targeting women. On July 29, Twitter reported revenue of $312 million, somewhat exceeding estimates, on track to cross $1 billion in revenue during 2014. The New York Times reported $389 million during the same period, slightly missing estimates. And today, the Times appointed Alex MacCallum, a founding editor of The Huffington Post, to be assistant managing editor for audience development. The Times is reflecting on how to better understand and grow its social media use. Twitter is in the 'process of evaluating how we can improve policies to better handle tragic situations.' Let us think about this for a moment -- and contemplate this sad tale unfolding before us.
If you love hearing yourself talk, Adobe wants to put your voice center stage with a new video app.
Adobe Voice is a free app for iPad that produces short videos based on voice recordings, motion graphics and images. It's based on the idea that speaking is key in storytelling or getting a message across.
Voice is designed to be a social media vehicle that can be used by anyone from students to business people. It's billed as being simpler than shooting and editing a video while having more impact than a slide-show presentation.