Aging and Health Technology Watch

This is a rant. I am tired of youth-oriented tech vendors with their back-to-school laptops.  I am tired of how clumsy and non-intuitive most computing technologies are -- especially home networks. I am convinced that vendors like Apple, Cisco, Dell, HP, Intel, and Microsoft must be populated with thirty-somethings who design products for themselves and their inner geek. (Gee, why have a device that can be plugged in and just works? Instead, why don't we just add these 14 configuration steps?).

Get this. A Dallas article that advised homeowners to Senior-proof their house so you don't have to move later says universal design is now Hot.

This was an interesting week if you want to think about living to 100. Evercare offered up its 2009 Evercare 100@100 Survey -- which included survey results from college seniors. Dr.

I was fortunate to have an experience this week listening on calls when the Philips Lifeline pendant was activated.

Devices, devices, everywhere. I guess I just don't get telehealth-related technology 'progress' -- it seems like two steps forward in one area and a few backward somewhere else. On the one hand, there will be 15 million mobile and wireless telehealth devices by 2012, says an ABI July 22 research report, devices that will be jabbering away with information about our chronic disease measurement readings.

Yeah, yeah, Skype is cool for boomers and seniors -- especially grandparents. Free video conferencing with the grandkids and free long-distance calls -- even if some of them are a bit flaky in quality, probably due to a poor Internet connection. And the teaser (of course) is to upgrade you to their low, low international long distance phone plans.

So it's not the first time I have had the Kindle presented as a technology for seniors -- in a recent overview I did for a senior center, one of the attendees observed that I had left the product out.

I want to pose the question -- again. Just because we can set up all kinds of security in our elderly parent's home, is it right to put it there? Saw this from SmartHome's Web Camera section, a Web-Enabled Securelink Elderly Kit -- this turns out to be a PERS pendant -- the camera is extra.

Okay, you know that you can count on tech vendors to put 2 + 2 together and get 5, especially where their own product is involved.

Simulating in-person doctor's visits, sometimes called 'virtual visits', has become fairly trendy says the Wall Street Journal.