digital health

Some baby boomers check their personal data on smart watches or their phones regularly. They track their activities, tolerate the reminders to stand, wishing to do better than they did last week or last month. Maybe they stand on an ever-smarter weight scale – or go off to the gym to work out in groups or alone.  Why?  Maybe they are women (unaddressed at CES 2026) who worry about bone loss, have a justifiable fear of falling, or have already fallen.  Why don’t more than 26.9 % of women do strength training, to build muscle around bone to protect themselves in the event of a fall?

The AARP survey of ‘Jobs to be Done’ by AI shows readiness for health-related AI.  Health-related opportunities were cited – medication tracking, personalized wellness guidance, and active living reminders. At the same time, the report asserts that adoption depends on trust, customization and integration into day-to-day life.  What stands between today’s AI offerings and that next stage of adoption, which will be dependent on our trust of the technology.

January 2026 marks a notable milestone for senior care.  In a few weeks, the oldest baby boomers begin to turn 80-- with a life expectancy of another 8-10 years.  This is as significant a milestone as 2011 was – the year the boomers began to turn 65.  Experts noted at the time that hearing aids might become fashionable (which did happen in the hearables dangling pod market) – and that aging in place might become a trend – no kidding…During the next few years, to pick one example, retailers began to improve lighting, adjust store aisles to accommodate baby boomers in wheelchairs and add more seating in the pharmacy area. Consider changes made by CVS Health to provide more convenient experiences for older adults, including picking up prescriptions via the drive-through.

You know the experience.  You walk into the lobby of a medical practice, and the sign tells you to sign in at the kiosk. You drop your license in the slot – but the software is having a down day, and so a person emerges from behind the glass to debug it.  Meanwhile another person checks you in.  So their time savings from the device evaporate. The irritation of the patients trying to sign in grows – one announces how much he hates technology.

Conversation is becoming more interesting with ChatGPT 4.0.  For one thing, with its memory feature enabled, it easily inhales everything the conversationalist has ever said online, or even excludes the speaker’s previous remarks upon request. How can this be helpful to older adults? A tool that learns from multiple sources, aggregates if desired into a summary, incorporates links to sources, and then remembers the whole interchange – maybe that moves it into another tier of utility. The conversation could have been about travel possibilities, about transportation options, about more comfortable walking shoes – or brainstorming places to go on a future trip. Next interaction – do you want to hear what’s new in locations you viewed previously?

Strength-related tech for stronger women?  With all of the digital health startups and corresponding $10 billion in investment, I was curious as to why none are helping women gain strength, which is known to be a direct link to maintaining balance and improving bone health, not to mention helping to prevent falls. I remember a book published years ago called Strong Women Stay Young, specifically focused on older women. The author, Miriam Nelson,  noted the importance of strength training and bone health – and in particular, avoiding osteoporosis, suffered by one in five women aged 50+.  It turns out, none of the 2024 digital health investments that are focused on women ($1.1 billion) tackled this dimension of women’s health.

An impressive process was launched in 2013 at an AARP convention in Atlanta. Groups of older adults were shown how to use tablets. A presenter demonstrated and 4H volunteers sat at tables with the attendees to show them how to use them.  The program was called Mentor Up – and the idea was that young people could/should volunteer to help older adults with a device that was unfamiliar and baffling. At that time, the iPad was just three years old. The older adults in the room almost certainly did not own one -- at that time, 26 million older adults were NOT online. So their surprise and delight at what it could do made an impression. The role of young people was equally impressive -- and should be a role model for today.