The growing ecosystem of devices and products serving peoples’ health and well-being shows us that innovators already see the opportunity to serve the fast-growing market for self-care among people 50 years of age and up.
01/08/2026
For nearly twenty years, one thing has felt inevitable: when boomers reach “old age,” senior living demand will surge. And yet ..
01/08/2026
ChatGPT Health builds on consumer use of today's ChatGPT so responses are informed by your health information and context.
01/08/2026
The prize honors .lumen’s Glasses for the Blind, an AI-based device that applies autonomous driving technology adapted for pedestrians. Using computer vision and local processing, the headset understands the three-dimensional environment in real time without relying on the internet or pre-defined maps and guides the user through subtle vibrations indicating a safe direction to follow.
01/03/2026
The United States faces a fundamental mismatch between surging demand and insufficient capacity.
Comments
Focus on the person, not the disease and not the provider
The real issue is not the rapidity of AARP's population adopting the Zume Life solution, but rather how people who want to do a better job of self-care can have more success. Many people with chronic illnesses, even those who are well educated, motivated, and financially comfortable are unable to tend to all their own health-related activities as well as they would like -- they forget their medications, they are unable to keep track of their food, their symptoms, their moods, and hence don't have a clear sense of what works and what doesn't. Their challenge is one of *doing*. Zume Life is focused on helping these people take care of their own health, of enabling and empowering them to do what they *want* to do. You may want to read the white paper "Requirements and Design Implications for Mobile Self-Care Systems", available on our web site, to appreciate the complexity of the user's task and what needs to be done to make those tasks doable. A couple of additional thoughts: 1) Early adopters are likely to be Boomers, rather than the elderly. They have very busy and complicated lives, leaving them very little time for self-care. 2) Though it is important, of course, to think about how to help all 150 million Americans with chronic illnesses, it is just as critical to first make an impact somewhere, in some portion of that population. The learnings from initial successes will be critical to guide later progress.