aging in place

It's news -- 600 nursing homes closed so what’s the strategy to fix? Rant on.  You may have read a depressing article this morning in the Wall Street Journal about the number of people stuck in hospitals with no place to go because there are no nursing homes to take them – which is the status in the UK’s National Health System (NHS).  That was an embarrassment in the UK – and this is a scandal in the US. It never should not have gotten to this point. So many factors crushed nursing homes -- Covid and Private Equity nursing home ownership were big players, followed by government strategy to undermine them. For 14 years, Florida banned new nursing home construction. The federal “Money Follows the Person” was introduced in 2005 to enable seniors to avoid them and receive Medicaid-paid services. Reauthorized repeatedly, it is now authorized through 2027. 

Taking stock of the tech market for older adults – what’s happened? Past the halfway mark in 2023, it’s increasingly clear that the older adult tech market has been disrupted by changes in demand. Its increasingly transformed by new technologies emerging from new funding sources, tech disruption, and entrepreneurial initiatives. Some might say that tech adoption is still slow in some sectors, but it is not for lack of widespread funding sources and innovator motivation. What is the context for technology change in 2023?

Long ago 'aging in place' terminology emerged with a different meaning.  Forgotten now, it was briefly in Wikipedia to define the benefit of a continuing care retirement community where you did not have to leave the community if you required higher levels of care. And the term wandered over briefly to assisted living.  But it eventually stuck as remaining in your own home through thick and thin. And in 2013, it was promoted on the book circuit by former HUD director, Henry Cisneros about his 87-year-old mother – they were both insistent that she 'age in place.'  Which she did, until she died after a fall, isolated in her huge house after all her neighbors had died or moved away. 

February – that’s when the 2023 AI hysterical hype cycle went into full gear. You know a topic is important when leading media sites like the New York Times and Wall Street Journal become irrational and contribute to the general cacophony – even offering up worries from, wait for it, Henry Kissinger and Eric Schmidt – Kissinger is 98, but apparently still trying out new software tools.  Eric Schmidt was former CEO of Google – he should be worried.  But the article ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution was the whipped cream on top of the icing on the cake. Its subtitle: "Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment."