Conversational and generative AI

Future staffing demand will force industry to rethink care strategies. According to BLS, the industry will need 4.5 million care workers by 2029 to meet the demands of older adults. According to an Argentum staffing report, in 2025 alone another 347,000 caregivers are needed for memory care. The home care and senior living industries draw from the same population of prospective workers. Home care and home health care demand will drive 21% job growth by 2033, but 59% of agencies will experience shortages. What else will help address care needs?

Data about care is becoming the backbone of home care best practice.  In the past (and in some current settings) the home care worker has kept a book in the home for record keeping, bringing it in periodically to get paid. Today, organizations can use captured information about the home care situation, combining it with information aggregated from other clients or individual care recipient history. Data and the governance procedures to maintain its quality and security will, like other uses of AI, become the foundation for realizing its benefits in home care.

Executives see the possibilities for AI in home care. Home care and home health care are labor intensive industries. Hands-on work is historically preceded and followed by paper-based documents and tracking tools. However, it is increasingly likely that home care companies will move quickly past ‘Year One’ of AI as the labor-saving benefits are seen and realized. Interviewees, including agencies and tech firms, note the changes underway. Some are engaged in various pilot projects of AI-enabled tools, others are doing implementations, still others are already deployed. For example, report discussions surfaced the following:

An AI tech agent on our behalf – predicted long ago. Consider the definition: “An AI agent is a system that perceives its environment, makes decisions, and takes actions to achieve specific goals, often autonomously.” At first look, that seems quite scary and is reminiscent of two quite predictive fictions:  HAL 9000 in 2001 (“Sorry, Dave, I can’t do that”) or the robot in the Robot and Frank (2012) that takes care of every need of a lonely man with dementia, then assists him in committing crimes.  

Moving in later can mean greater care needs, but same staffing levels.  This article caught my eye – ‘Significantly more difficult’ to care for today’s assisted living residents. The gist of the story is that people are moving in later, now in their mid-80’s and often because living at home is untenable. Which means they need more help and care than the organizations used to expect.  According to AHCA/NCAL: ”Four in 10 are living with Alzheimer’s disease or other dementias. After a median stay around 22 months, roughly 60% of residents will move out of assisted living to transition to a skilled nursing center.​” 

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?

The more things change – some trends dominate.   As the demographics change, couples age at different rates, life expectancy grows among the 65+ --averaging 20 more years, the oldest population growth rate outpaces younger demographic segments.  As the oldest baby boomer crosses 80 in the next few months several trends will drive technology adoption in distinctly new ways. As a result, the market for tech will need to accommodate a series of changes, sales methodologies and market opportunities.  A worsening labor shortage will continue to plague the senior care sectors, including senior living, nursing homes, and in-home care. What are the drivers that should attract innovators in the older adult tech industry?