AgeTech

Evolving technology for an aging population – is evolving. Most who are in and around the tech and aging market would agree that this market is s-l-o-w-l-y emerging, offering up fairly complex tech, equally complex sales channel structures, and a pricing model that begs for (but doesn’t get) insurance reimbursement.  Research centers (like Stanford’s or the MIT AgeLab) and consortia like LeadingAge contemplate the tech futures of helpful robotics, smart homes, devices to shore up memory loss, and cars that could take the worry out of whether we can see, hear, or hold a wheel well enough to drive, never mind remember where we are going. In this world, so focused on health care and senior housing, we can find telehealth technology (Bosch), passive activity sensors (Healthsense) and sleep pattern tracking (WellAWARE), wander management devices, and the ever-so-glacial integration of these with health records.

The times are changing – just ask boomers.  Just when is the survey glass half-full or half-empty? According to a June survey from The Hartford and MIT AgeLab, “50 percent of boomers want to stay in their current home as they age, but most have no plans in place.”  Hold on there, just a second, that means HALF of them want to move! How interesting and how antithetical to aging in place! But it was just a year ago that AARP surveyed the 45+ population and found that "almost three-quarters of Baby Boomers ages 45 and older – and effectively nine in ten people 65+ – said they want to stay in their current homes for as long as possible.” That was then and this is now.

Hospitals say don't come back -- but do they mean it? Apparently hospitals needed the current push from the government to figure out a way to keep patients, especially the elderly, from being re-admitted within 30 days of their departure.  So now many hospitals are on the case, working their way through individual pilot programs designed the way they see fit, one pilot program at a time. In an article whimsically titled 'Don't Come Back, Hospitals Say,' today's WSJ offered up Boston University's 'Louise', a 'virtual discharge advocate' wheeled up to bedside (aka a software app) to offer discharge instructions to patients (post hospital regimens, including lists of meds) as they ready to leave the hospital.  BU's Project RED (Re-Engineered Discharge) converts into a packet of materials that offer up a medication dosage package and instructions.