Seniors

First there was too much information.  At the forecasters became more insistent that Irma would hit Florida – the state with the highest percentage of older adults -- as a Category 5 hurricane, many of the possibly 4 million older adult residents appeared to leave first – when the highways were still passable. Then more tried to leave and were stuck in monumental traffic jams.  Finally, there were the stalwarts determined to stay, in the Keys, in Miami, in Bonita Springs, in Jacksonville. And for senior living communities, evacuation seemed near-impossible. Ultimately for some with no place to go – and no help – they died due to neglect and lack of followup by a state agency.

Lots of talk about technology talking to us.  We are in a 'voice-first-this' and voice-first-that moment in technology history.  So much buzz, that even Apple thinks Siri may need to wise up and consider the competition – which is speaking to us from everywhere, and has even (in research) reduced the error rate down to 5.1%.   Of course, when you imagine that voice tech is used for in-car navigation systems (Drive to Western Avenue – no not cistern, I said Western!) and may be driving home automation systems, alerting to falls, and assisting home health aides, it’s important to have very high expectations for very low error rates.

Trends come and trends go – but some trends generate their own trends.  No doubt you saw the news that one-fifth of individuals aged 65+ (as officially counted by someone) are still working at least part time -- some past the age of 70.  In fact, this is the highest rate of employment level of older adults in 55 years.  Perhaps this trend is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Apparently 79% of US workers expect to supplement retirement income by working for pay.  Maybe they read about the recent assertion that the definitional age of 'old' is moving up to 73 for women and 70 for men. Are older workers concerned about life expectancy? Do they know that if they live to age 65, life expectancy is anticipated to be 88.8 for women and 86.6 for men? Are they worried about outliving their money (aka plummeting retirement income)? It used to be that older adults feared nursing homes worse than death. That was in 2007.  Now the worry is outliving their money.

Investor money has forever flowed to innovation in robotics. Robots on the Runway at Digital Health at CES offered a view of what was new then in human-like robots, the most charming was Anybots QB, now QB2 – which would 'go to the office for you.'   In fact, this ‘telepresence’ robot begs the question, what’s a robot anyway – is it a 'machine controlled device through an external or (usually internal) computer, often equipped with audio, visual, and/or tactile sensors as well as other devices and tools to perform one or several programmed jobs?'  Oh yeah.  They can be autonomous, like the iRobot one for the military – working on their own.  Like Anybots, they could be a telepresence robot – a 'remote controlled, wheeled device that has wireless internet connectivity.'   And the market for all types in healthcare globally some say is $2.8 billion.