Aging and Health Technology Watch

LeadingAge in San Diego and more.  Entrepreneurs clearly see the opportunity for providing tech-enabled services to help care for older adults.  Large events like Leading Age, Argentum, and sub-events within CES and HIMSS all point to the business potential that draws startups as well as new offerings from existing players – in what may become an increasingly crowded market. Here five recent announcements, two from the Startup Garage at Leading Age in San Diego -- adding three others from recent press releases.  All information is drawn from the websites of the companies themselves.

Medication non-adherence – it’s serious. This medication non-adherence (not filling prescriptions or missing dosages) is a major health issue – resulting in 10% of hospitalizations, 125,000 deaths, and costing the healthcare system up to $300 billion/year.  Consider that 1 in 5 Medicare patients are re-admitted to the hospital within 30 days after discharge – half of them because of medication non-adherence. In a study by Walgreens, researchers found that every 1% improvement in adherence saves about $50 in healthcare spending.

October was a long and extravagant month for the tech market.  Between trade events, including the Connected Health Conference in Boston, LeadingAge in San Diego, HLTH in Las Vegas, the Aging 2.0 Revolutionize Conference in Boston which was highlighted by the reveal of Venture Capital investor Dominic Endicott's $2 Trillion Age-Tech market size, making the Consumer Technology Association's $29 Billion look cautious. No doubt there were also many smaller events throughout the country. Here are the October blog posts:

How much time do we spend setting up our ‘smart’ phones?  Every few years, I change phones. In the past, Android-to-Android, I wasted at least a full day customizing all the ‘improved’ features the way they were on the previous phone, setting up home screens, eliminating bloatware, and downloading apps that did not properly convert.  This time, it took me most of 2 weekend days to set up an iPhone to join family photo sharing. The access to photos – that was one of the good parts. Otherwise, it was maddening and sent me out to forums again and again.  I learned about the also-constant bug-fix upgrades, email addresses masquerading as Apple IDs (don’t get me started) and other apparently arbitrary design decisions whined about online. And then there was the stylistic non-charm of repositioning jiggling apps icons.  But yay, now I see shared photos and learned how to stop auto-play of videos in Safari.

You are increasingly likely to have a wearable -- around your neck or on your wrist. You may collect your own data for your own tracking and use.  For those who see a wearable in a health context, they may be disappointed to know that their doctor doesn’t seem to care or know what to do with your heart rhythm data.  But you can gain great benefit from tracking your performance (exercise, heart rate) – competing with yourself, and feeling the satisfaction from any improvement over time.  What are the benefits of wearables today -- and in the future?

Announcements of new offerings are arriving – will they/can they be used?  Hopefully these 5 will offer benefit that can and will be realized by older adults. Writers of these 2019 articles about the topic are not so sure that new technologies for this population may not be reaching their intended audience. That can be due to a variety of barriers, including fear that they are not using them properly (UCSD study), lack of internet access (which would limit awareness), low technology literacy (TechCrunch), including lack of familiarity with terminology, and physical challenges (research from MPDI). Here are five new technologies that could provide benefit to older adults – content is from the companies:

Hearing aids should appeal to those with significant hearing loss.  It’s a given that hearing loss interferes with communication – which itself is a risk for social isolation – as well as fall risk and dementia.  Ironically, according to the recently published and comprehensive MarketTrak10 survey, the decision to wear them is so often delayed years – the delay resulting from excuses like “hear well enough; can’t afford; too expensive; no coverage.”  Given the associated risks and isolation from delay, it is surprising that until recently, the devices were well-matched with the excuses.  What’s changed to overcome all of these excuses?

Fall and red leaves arrived as typical late in the month.  But as inevitable as those changes are, other notable events occurred during September – including AARP’s partnership with Getty Images to combat age bias in advertising. Also in September, Medicare changes were introduced encouraging technology use by health providers, particularly telehealth services. This may boost the use of telehealth technology (for example remote visitations) which has seen a rise of consumer interest in recent polling, though not a corresponding rise in adoption by the majority of physicians. The four blog posts from September:

​AARP research highlights changes in technology adoption.   What a difference more than a decade makes. Consider a long-ago AARP document that examined technology use of the 65+ population. Remember Healthy@Home in 2008? You probably don’t, but you should read it. Kudos to Linda Barrett who led the production of this milestone report.  The iPhone had just been released in June of 2007, so this survey did not ask about smartphone use – there was no Digital Health (a "check engine light for your body!"); the Longevity Economy hadn’t been invented; Fitbit was a 2007 new clip-on tracker, and Facebook was still a campus toy. The survey was fielded in December of 2007 with a population of 907 adults aged 65-98 (the mean age was 74). This population is rarely surveyed today, despite the growing lifespan of the 65+. Much was revealed, though it is another example (as if we needed one) that the more things change, the more they don’t.  

Getty images show advertising’s ageist stereotypes.  A new report from AARP this week zeros in on something we all knew: Advertisers focus on the young – not unlike the tech firms who make products being advertised.  Despite the 50+ population representing one third of the US population, they only show up in 13% of advertising imagery. The AARP report authors analyzed the Getty images – and observed that even though 69% of people aged 65-73 own a smartphone, less the 5% of the images of technology included any older adults. The same held true for images of workers. While one third (53 million) of the labor force is 50+, only 13% showed them working – otherwise they were shown at home, with a partner or in a medical setting. And the kicker: 81% of the employees of advertising agencies are younger than 55 -- their ageism is well-documented.