OMAHA, Neb., March 26, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Studies over the last several decades have shown that seniors have an overwhelming desire to age in their own homes. In fact, more recent research from Home Instead, Inc. affirms this number is still as high as 94 percent.1 However, new data shows seniors are redefining what it means to age in place, with one in four planning to move to a new home to accommodate changing needs that come with aging.
Where the baby (or elderly family member) may be. The WSJ investigation of Care.com has only added a level of urgency about the risky business of finding and placing caregivers in homes. Consider the Care.com CEO’s egregious assertion that "Care.com is a marketplace platform, like Indeed or LinkedIn." Really, finding someone to watch your baby or your aging father is analogous to finding a worker to fill a job opening in your IT department or seeking a manager to fill out your org chart? And having nasty problems with convicted criminals taking on caregiving roles, with deaths occurring in multiple states, but never aggregated into a nationwide picture of a horror show, until research into incidents was done by a Stanford MBA student? Read that link, please.
2019 Technology Market Overview is online this week. When assembling the 2019 tenth anniversary version, it was apparent that this year reflects change -- in the supply-demand balance in the overbuilt senior housing market, in policy changes driving health care services into the home, in market forecasts, and in the mix of vendors who serve the market. It's in many ways a good-news/bad-news story. Awareness is growing about an aging demographic, working longer and with longer life expectancy than previous generations. At the same time, the technology market continues to expand in complexity, privacy and interoperability issues, while not effectively lowering cost of access or prices of useful devices -- and not necessarily boosting the availability of training on their benefits or use. Here are four updated premises from the 2019 Market Overview of Technology for Older Adults:
So much VC money, so little resulting change. Past venture capital investment in home care boggles the mind. It seems only yesterday that Tech-Enabled Home Care was published – including that wonderful Forbes graphic "Why VCs Care More About Home Care." The Forbes article noted the $200 million invested just in 2016 -- with big money that year putting $60M into ClearCare, $46 million into Care.com and $42 million into Honor as next in line. The VCs cared, all right – if that money was an indicator. But were they smart? Did they change the dynamics of the home care industry? With smaller investment that year, it's good to see that Envoy (concierge service for independent living), Kindly Care (home care agency), Caremerge (home care platform), and Seniorlink (care coordination) are in their same businesses from 2016 – and others from the period like Envoy and CareLinx received additional investment and moved forward. What happened to other Forbes rock stars?
Once upon a time, in a language far, far away…We used terms like long distance, remote, and telepresence to describe services and experiences that were taking place somewhere else. We were guided on how to cope with these remote processes where we were not present to manage or experience. And for the care recipients being managed, they were unable to communicate problems in their on-site, 'real' experience. Consider dementia care and the still-startling lack of cameras in these settings – despite family willingness to pay. These limitations seem so yesterday. Even a telepresence player like Beam threw in the towel and refers to the world it now navigates as ‘virtual.’ Let's take a longer look into this virtual world as it relates to care of older adults and consider such offerings as:
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Where the baby (or elderly family member) may be. The WSJ investigation of 
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Once upon a time, in a language far, far away…We used terms like 