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PERS

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PERS

The PERS industry must do a better job of serving seniors

These are tech transition times for everyone – including seniors and their devices.  In case you didn’t see it, the Pew numbers about smartphone use are out – 27% of the 65+ have smartphones, up from 19% last year. Given the date of that data (from last fall), let’s just assume that this number is actually lower than today's reality.  So why should a PERS reseller or manufacturer care?  First because carriers don’t want to sell feature/clamshell phones any more. They make it difficult to even find them. They are selling smartphones to people who don’t want or use all of the features they have, but they’re buying them anyway because that is what they’re being sold.  In retrospect, Philips Lifeline might have seen the near term PERS future – and it could be a smartphone – and thus an app. And thus -- why have more than one device? And why not pair a tiny pendant or clip to a smartphone? Or make a watch?

Five Recent Technology Announcements for Aging in Place

There is more to the world of aging-related technologies than CES. Seriously, can that be true? And yes, I actually know several people who asked me in the past week -- what is CES? My explanation was weak -- there were no follow-up questions. Anyway, these five companies that have been focused on technology to help older adults made recent announcements of changes to their business strategies, products, and/or branding approaches. Each in its own way offers a milestone for the industry -- but taken together, the announcements demonstrate a focus on the older adult population and new ways to deliver benefit for them by providing additional products, service innovations and partnerships during 2015. Text comes directly from company websites:

Lively Reimagines Personal Emergency Response with New Safety Watch

01/21/2015

Lively today announced it is now shipping its new safety watch, an enhancement to its existing smart home product for independent older adults. The Lively safety watch brings modern design and features to a product category long overdue for a transformation, redefining what people should expect of a personal emergency response (PERS) wearable. Available for only $49.95 with pay-as-you-go plans starting at $27.95 a month for ongoing service, Lively’s product keeps older adults healthy and out of the hospital while simultaneously easing the worry and burden of family caregivers.

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lert.ly™ Launches New Ultra-Low Power WiFi Personal Safety System For Seniors

01/06/2015

lert.ly has launched the first all battery-powered, all ultra-low power WiFi personal safety system, focused on protecting seniors who are living independently.  The system uses patented technology that allows for fast installation and easy access by seniors and caregivers.   The unique approach lert.ly employs has been recognized at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where lert.ly made the finals of the LaunchIt CES 2015 startup competition.

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Alert1's "True Aging In Place Stories" E-book Becomes Amazon™ Best Seller

12/22/2014

new #1 Best Selling ebook, entitled “Medical Alert Systems: True Aging in Place Stories,” now available on Amazon™.

Alert1 Medical Alert Systems' ebook is a collection of 13 short stories based on testimonials from Alert1 members. This eye-opening and entertaining publication is a look inside aging in place in America. Each vignette concludes with recommendations to help readers age in place safely. Alert1’s recommendations are based on 26 years’ experience and are designed to assist seniors in creating a full aging in place plan.

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Ten Tips -- 2014 Year-End Guide for Launching a Product or Service

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:

Configuring the baseline of activity for older adults

Less movement and non-movement matter.  The Washington Post ran an article recently about GreatCall's partnership with an AI company so that patterns and changes in behavior could be reported to family members from its wearable PERS device.  Of course, tracking and reporting about changes from baselines -- that's nothing new for sensor-based home monitoring systems.   But it is a surprisingly big deal in the PERS industry -- where even those who once supported pattern-detecting big ideas dropped them like a hot rock -- in favor of the transactional PERS world -- press the button and someone will come.   The most radical changes in that industry over five years, fall detection and GPS tracking, have still been transactional -- Mrs. Smith, we are responding, are you okay? -- versus, I'm Mrs. Smith's device, and based on her behavior changes, she is not okay.

Are tech innovators ageist -- or have they just not considered seniors?

Some cool tech enters the market. Consider the Apple introduction of the HealthKit (for the health care industry) and the smartwatch which joins the Pebble (which helped fuel interest in smartwatches) and Samsung smartwatches.  Intel found smartwatches intriguing enough to sponsor a clinical trial in conjunction with Parkinson's disease.  Why? Smartwatches (and smartphones) contain accelerometers that enable the device to determine sudden motion -- like detecting a fall, gyroscope and compass to detect whether you're on of the 61 million people out there running.  And they are able to determine location by enabling GPS position of the device. These devices have geofencing capability -- used in Apple devices for setting up a Location Reminder when you arrive at or leave a location (don't forget to do such-and-so errand).

Why would the consumer buy a smartphone PERS app from Philips?

Philips Lifeline has had, to say the least, an unusual week. First they launch a smartphone PERS application that makes no sense.   The press release quotes the Philips/Georgetown GSEI study that repeats that tiresome cliché that "seniors want to stay as independent as possible as they get older" -- really, no kidding. Therefore smartphone-enabled seniors would want this $13.95/month service. Since they put out a press release and sought media attention with this app, it is safe to say that want us to know about it. And in volume, this would be a nice incremental revenue stream and another use of their highly trained call center reps.  But what volume? 19% of the 65+ population owns a smartphone -- that's a market of 8 million people.  But two-thirds of adults with smartphones download no apps -- using only those which came with the phone.  Now we're down to 2.8 million in an available market.

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