AgeTech

Summer lingers in that August lull before all are back-to-business.  Broadcasters are substitutes; columnists are away; the world is awash in out-of-office emails.  So it is seems to be the right time to recap the last month of blog posts before heading into the forward-look at conferences and events about businesses targeting the older adult market.  For example, you may be looking at attending, sponsoring, exhibiting or just learning about LeadingAge, Aging 2.0 Optimize, DigitalHealth Summit At CES or Aging in America.  While mulling those over, check out our new research, a July white paper on social isolation sponsored by GreatCall.  Now here are those five blog posts you may have missed. 

A virtual assistant that can misunderstand you more effectively.  So perhaps you never liked asking Siri questions, partly because the answer was often a website you peer at on a phone.  How dumb is that?  Siri was created a long time ago, but it really got its name when it was introduced into the iPhone in 2011 and dubbed an ‘Intelligent Personal Assistant’. Maybe there is a Siri improvement you wanted that will be available sometime in the fall in iOS 11.  Maybe you want Siri’s English to be in Chinese, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.  Maybe you don’t care because you are too embarrassed to speak to Siri in public settings, like meetings, and prefer the auto-correction of your mediocre typing.  Or maybe you are excited now, because Siri may, just possibly, soon work with other apps. Woohoo! 

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.

Movin' up – so goes the definition of old age. Maybe this confirms what you have already observed, and the Society of Actuaries (which also uses Social Security Life Tables) has also calculated. According to Stanford economist John Shoven, the definition of "old" is rising, ridiculously compared to the 1920s, but very interesting, nonetheless. Says Shoven: For women, "old" is approximately age 73, with women transitioning out of middle age at 65. For men, he asserts that "old" is around age 70, with transitioning out of middle age at age 60.  The assumption underlying this are based on "risk of dying" within 1, 2 or 4 years. If it is 1% or less, a person is is middle-aged. Good graphic, and no surprise, it's another document in the litany of advice for deferring Social Security payments until late, late, late, despite the actual behavior in which 42% of men and 48% of women are claiming it at age 62.