AgeTech

2019 Technology Market Overview is online this week. When assembling the 2019 tenth anniversary version, it was apparent that this year reflects change -- in the supply-demand balance in the overbuilt senior housing market, in policy changes driving health care services into the home, in market forecasts, and in the mix of vendors who serve the market.   It's in many ways a good-news/bad-news story.  Awareness is growing about an aging demographic, working longer and with longer life expectancy than previous generations.  At the same time, the technology market continues to expand in complexity, privacy and interoperability issues, while not effectively lowering cost of access or prices of useful devices -- and not necessarily boosting the availability of training on their benefits or use.  Here are four updated premises from the 2019 Market Overview of Technology for Older Adults:

The more things change...This is the tenth anniversary of the launch of this Market Overview of technology for ‘Aging in Place’, to be re-published in March 2019 – the category of offerings that help enable older adults to remain longer in their home of choice. The launch of that first report was timed in conjunction with the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit of 2009 and offered a chance to speak publicly about a market category that had been largely ignored by tech industry analysts.  As a long-time Forrester analyst, this seemed odd, not unlike the ‘tree falling in the forest’ cliché – if there is no market overview of tech categories, how do vendors position themselves in the market? 

In 2018, technology utilization grew – so did frustrations.  While Internet and social media technology use has plateaued over all age ranges, Facebook still has captured only 41% of the 65+.  Pew’s data showed that smartphone ownership still has not overtaken cellphones among the 65+.   In early 2019, AARP Research published a technology survey taken in 2018 which showed ownership of smartphones growing to 65% of the 65+.  However, that same survey revealed low trust in online safety, and generally low trust in institutions to keep their personal data safe, a justified worry, given the number of data breaches that occurred during 2018.