MetLife today reminds us why aging in place, like long term care rates, will trend upward.  With MetLife's new study just out that updated nursing home, assisted living and home care rates -- it is no wonder that seniors will, whether or not it is appropriate for them, increasingly age outside the nursing home and assisted living realms. On average across the US, nursing home rates have risen 4.6% to $83,585 per year; assisted living is up 5.2% to $39,516 per year and home care aides now cost on average $21/hour.  Home care, in particular, is untenable as 24x7 coverage -- multiplying out to an impossible $183,960/year. Nursing homes have closed, assisted living facilities are not full. Given rising life expectancy, especially for women, combined with rising rates of diabetes and other chronic diseases, we seem to be approaching a conundrum of longer life and poorer choices and options. This represents both an opportunity and a dilemma for today's vendors:  the opportunity -- filling in care gaps of every type with remote monitoring, health and fitness tools, video, and wearable technology.  The dilemma -- recognition that those who will benefit most may be least able to pay for it as currently marketed and priced -- and until adoption is greater, price reductions and bundling into broader solutions is unlikely. 

Tangential to the talk: technology for an aging population. Looking through the agenda of the Connected Health Symposium in Boston, it's apparent in an agenda so densely packed with doctors (not to mention the attendees, with 26 just from Mass General Hospital) that this is not a conference about technology and aging (duh!).  And that is despite the fact that the biggest patient dilemma for both the businesses and providers packing the rooms remains the aging and very old patients who fill their offices and hospital beds and run up the largest bills at end of life.  Among the sponsors and exhibitors, these vendors stood out for me as important for serving an aging population. In alphabetical order:

So if you think about an aging 'tsunami' -- doesn't it just make you think of mHealth and iPhones? Rant on.  I was on a call yesterday about an upcoming 'caregiving' and technology event -- as the call proceeded, the topic turned toward low-cost mHealth applications, ubiquitious at a Price Waterhouse tolerance level of $5 per month. [Side note -- PWC doesn't like 'mHealth', so they have renamed it 'Healthcare Unwired']. This week's Health 2.0, next month's Connected Health, not to mention eHealth, telehealth, wireless health, healthcare unbound or unwired -- now that's a tsunami. Note the $2.2 billion of new investment into biotech, medical devices and health IT -- just in the 2nd quarter of this year. 

August was a bonanza of buzz, buzz, buzz.  Usually August is a snoozer (and a slow news month) in the business world, what with vacations and organizational regrouping. But beginning with the August 3 Intel-GE Joint Venture announcement that fueled hope and speculation about accelerating intentions, more activity and media tracked right behind. During August, Great Call announced a new Jitterbug medication reminder service, Healthsense received a round of investment led by Radius Ventures, a $1.3 billion M-Health market sizing got Qualcomm and AT&T excited. Or maybe that that was 'mHealth' -- Best Buy (re)surfaced with health-related stuff in stores. Within the general what's-it-all-mean confusion, more press followed last month's NY Times series -- this time NPR offered up a series on aging and technology as well. Never one to shut up, I offered my own 'bah humbug' assessment of the assessment.