Seniors

Today's older adults will not get a 'check engine light for their body.' Investors in innovation worry when utilization of technology doesn't match hyper-hysterical investment pace.  So it is with Digital Health. Buried beneath broad and unclear definitions, how about that 'check engine light' metaphor -- reset it yourself, go ahead! Vague and hyper-funded, Digital Health, says Startup Health, received up to $5 billion investment just in 2014. Still there's bit of whining about startups starting but users not adopting. So what's the solution?  Don't critique investment decisions, bad product ideas and those dual dilemmas of doctor and patient disinterest.  See VC Tom Rodgers push the predicted adoption date out another 15-20 years and at the same time criticize the non-tech literacy of the old and sick of today. Says he: Digital Health will go mainstream when millennials are older and sicker.

The VA continues to "set the telehealth table." That line is from 2010 when the VHA's telehealth pioneer Adam Darkins observed: "“The patients have to do less travel, and they can get problems resolved quickly.… They feel the care coordination system is their lifeline." The program was cited as having 43,000 Veterans enrolled with a long road ahead. Fast forward to 2014 -- the VA's Telehealth program served 690,000 veterans in its most recent fiscal year, or 12% of all veterans. And the long-term study of members of the Geisinger Health Plan showed a 44% reduction in readmission rates of those monitored in a 4-year telehealth study.

First the good news -- life expectancy is up.  So as boomers cross the 65-year-marker at 8000 per day, 10,000 per day, or whatever, they just received some good news, for a change, from the CDC.  Life expectancy has inched up. A woman who is 65 today can expect to live an average of 21 more years (to age 86), and a man at 65 has an average life expectancy of 18 more years (to age 83). Note that these are averages and that the averages include those with chronic diseases. That average includes the nearly 26% likelihood of diabetes (diagnosed and undiagnosed) -- and that diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the US  and that heart disease is the number one cause of death among women and ditto for men.  Thus life expectancy outside of those conditions is most certainly far longer.

The numbers of our boomer lives.  So you launch your market messages with an assertion about the addressable market for a product. So one of the timeworn ways used is to start with a concept.  For example, they are going to turn 65 and are retiring -- or perhaps they are unretiring and starting businesses -- at a rate that is big, really, really, big.  So let's consider the following oddity. In 2010, boomers were going to turn 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day for the next 18 years. Then in 2014, you perhaps noticed a different phrase about boomers, including this one from AARP: They are going to turn 65 at the rate of 8,000 per day for the next 18 years. This caused me to wonder, what happened to 2000 of them?  Could they have died?  Left the country?  How many people there are in a certain age range making up an addressable market -- that should be fact, right?  Sort of.  I turned to Brent Green, an advisor to boomer marketers.

Next week is Active Aging Week 2014.  According to the International Council on Active Aging, there are 3000 events (all over the place) to celebrate beginning tomorrow -- there are "never more reasons to get off the couch."  So now there are 43 million people age 65+ in the US. (Remember when it was 39 million, back in 2012?) Today there are many reasons for older adults to get up and get moving. Seniors are saddled with ever-lengthening life expectancies (one in four of today's 65-year-olds will live to 90! They are stuck in their awkward and costly houses, with questionable health status and a propensity to be overweight.  Meanwhile, more than half of those aged 65+ rely on Social Security -- with its average payment of $1294/month -- for more than half of their income. 

Listening to the weather channel could make an isolated senior nervous.  Nearly 46% of women aged 75+ (around 11 million) live alone -- and one in three of them will live until at least the age of 90. In fact, 2 million are aged 90+ now.  If they listen to the news or the weather channel, they have quite a bit of opportunity to be frightened about the prospect of tornados, hurricanes, flash floods, excessive heat, poor air quality or wildfires. Perhaps they're watching TV and they see that absolutely horrendous Life Alert ad. That's it for going down to the basement. Then the telephone or doorbell rings -- a nice distraction from the 4+ hours per day spent watching TV or perhaps the few minutes online -- if there is a computer or tablet around them to use.