AgeTech

Don’t see the products your constituents need? Launch a fund to get them created. Sometimes organizations become frustrated with the pace of change and decide to do something about it. One of those is Link-age in Mason, Ohio, a group purchasing organization that buys on behalf of 450 senior living communities in 39 states. The organization, led by CEO Scott Collins, is launching a $20 million ‘gray’ national fund to accelerate creation of products and services for seniors. Local investment banker, John Hopper, managing director of the new Link-age Ventures (partnered with CincyTech), rightly observes: "We haven’t bumped into anyone else in the industry doing anything similar." Says Collins: "Entrepreneurs are eager to address the market, but few understand the needs."  The investors will make money when the companies are sold – which they surely will be if they do find new and innovative ways to address, as Scott Collins indicates, the food, shelter, transportation and socialization needs of older adults -- well beyond the boomer age ranges of 48 to 66. 

Perhaps we need a new set of work and life expectations.  Doesn't it strike you as interesting that the so-called 'retirement' age (that is when you can receive full Social Security benefits) has been 65 for a long time? It has bumped up just recently -- but then so has average life expectancy. According to data compiled by the Social Security Administration:  "A man reaching age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 83. A woman turning age 65 today can expect to live, on average, until age 85. And those are just averages. About one out of every four 65-year-olds today will live past age 90, and one out of 10 will live past age 95." The oldest age that SSA considers for initial full eligibility is 67 -- for those born in 1960 or later. Meanwhile, the average anticipated retirement age in the US is, what a surprise, age 67.  

Sharp contrast separates business and service lenses of baby boomers. You might think you were in different planets – at last week’s Aging in America conference, on a Wednesday a discussion of "E-commerce, MobileVideo, Gaming and the Mobile Wallet" at the 2012 What’s Next Boomer Business Summit – a conference within a conference. The next day at ASA, you could consider "Successfully Integrating Boomers for a Sustainable Senior Center Model."  When picturing the 50+ segment, is it the hop-skipping-and-jumping boomer, the entrepreneur boomer, the service-providing boomer, the shopper in the AARP lens of the  Longevity Economy (What’s Next), or perhaps it’s the live-forever boomer, straining our budgets and reducing our expectations (ASA)?

A plethora of sessions -- but where are the exhibitors?  For the past few days at ASA’s Aging in America, I heard various speakers talk about the importance of technology for older adults -- I babbled on about it a bit myself. It will make this the ‘age to age’, learn to ‘love the device you’re with’, so that you can attend sessions about designing technology for older adults, learn about tech training for seniors, see what's coming and who is doing what. The many sessions that discussed technology were categorized in the program book as ‘Housing, accessibility and technology’ – so I wondered how many consumer-focused tech vendor exhibitors were in the exhibit hall. I reasoned that all of these aging services professionals would want to know about all of the useful software and devices that they could refer to clients to improve their quality of life. Not counting the back office systems (the ERPs of aging services), I looked through the book and show floor, searching for tech to connect older adults with professionals, families and caregivers. And there it wasn’t.