Just as interest is heating up, could adoption stall? Turns out we’ve been in an innovators' bubble for Digital Health's Hype-and-Hope (HAH). Who knew there were 10 indicators of doom ahead? Stating the obvious, 'entrepreneurs are creating products patients don’t want to use' and there aren’t enough 'reimbursement incentives to drive providers to prescribe.' And those creating wearable and mobile variants seem to have missed sight of the target market – that is, boomers and beyond.
Some tech companies don’t see the senior market as an opportunity. They are the Peter Pan tech firms, the ones in which no one (including the customer) ever ages (you might know them as Facebook, Apple, Google, and Twitter). Meanwhile, from Nashville, France, and Germany, others see inclusion and extra services as good business, maybe because this market is pretty much ignored by the gang of four. Here are five companies that vary a platform or a product to make it more useful for an older adult market or service. – All material is derived from the vendor websites or press releases:
The medical alert industry chugs on…and websites mislead. [Rant on]Fear-based medical alert marketing enjoys robust web traffic, an enhancement to its senior-centric TV advertising. Searchers with an at-risk family member or who saw an older woman at the bottom of a TV staircase can find a plethora of matches. That particular you-know-who staircase vendor was founded in 1987 and salvaged a slogan from a defunct originator, adding the word 'help' in its next trademarked life. But by now, shouldn’t this market have been transformed by technology or undergone a business model change that would mandate a new name? Well, it truly was transformed by a technology – SEO. Go ahead, Google the term. The not-so-medical alert is an SEO marvel, injecting old content with fresh dates. As you scan the list, note multi-device review sites that appear to be pay-to-play, whether they are or not.
Cooperative Response Center, Inc. (CRC) announces it has recently partnered with Better Alerts in West Conshohocken, Penn., to monitor its mobile personal emergency response systems (mPERS).
Milwaukee, WI, August 26, 2015 --(PR.com)-- With the push of a button or a simple voice-command, seniors can now extend their ability to live independently by 2-5-10 years with a new device called “The Q Watch.”
What’s new with PERS? For several years now pseudo-statistics have been floating about the long-standing PERS market – asking the same question over and over hasn’t changed the paraphrased answer: 'The market is approximately $1.5 billion in the US and changes very slowly. Is it true that only 10% of the purchased devices are mobile – that is usable away from the home? Insiders today say that 20% of the sales are for mobile devices. So what else is apparent and new with the PERS space in the past four months -- from the companies own material:
BOCA RATON, Fla.—ADT has added a wearable, mobile PERS device to its health product portfolio.
The On-The-Go Emergency Response System allows seniors, along with younger folks—hikers and runners, for example—to contact specially trained monitoring personnel in the event they take a tumble or a more life-threatening fall. What’s new for ADT is that this GPS-enabled device worn as a necklace allows for communication and emergency response outside of the clients’ home bases.
PORTLAND, OR -- (Marketwired) -- 07/08/15 -- Consumer Cellular, the mobile carrier with the highest overall customer satisfaction according to Nielsen Mobile Insights, has entered the mobile Personal Emergency Response System (mPERS) market with the launch of the Ally. This marks Consumer Cellular's first mPERS offering and is available through the Consumer Cellular website and customer call centers.
