Telehealth-RPM-Virtual Visits-Voice Health

​CES 2020 – walking the land of the new.  What has 170,000 attendees, long lines, baffling arrangements of booth numbers across multiple, gigantic locations and more robots than you can shake a motion sensor at?  That was CES 2020.  This gigantic parade of the international new and possible can be perused online in detail (and perhaps more usefully) without walking a step or sniffing cigar smoke.  This time, seen (somewhat) in person, here are 10 new offerings from the show that may be relevant to the older adult technology market. Descriptions are drawn from show booth presentations, sessions, websites, and press releases:

Diabetes is a critical health problem.  More than 30 million Americans have diabetes – but 23 million of them, according to the CDC, are undiagnosed. Today, the obesity rate for adults 60 and over has risen to 41%. It is estimated that 30% of the overweight adults have diabetes – and most diabetics are overweight. Another third of the adult population has pre-diabetes – including 23 million of the 65+.  A survey of technology offerings reveals a plethora of apps and information sites, not to mention devices that are part of the diabetes management equation. So what technologies are viewed as useful for the millions with diabetes? Here is a sampling:

Apps: Nutrition tracking apps for monitoring diet and blood sugar (from Healthline) include Glucose Buddy, DiabetesConnect, and SugarSense.  Health2Sync (‘round the clock diabetes care’ provides a logging tool as well as encouragement. In addition, apps that help educate individuals with diabetes include Fooducate, which explains the sugar and carb content of various foods. The tracking of blood sugar has been gamified in MySugr, which has at least 1 million users in 52 countries.)

Is the healthcare consumer ready for voice assistants? Not quite.  There is a technology overhaul underway – the biggest change in user experience since the introduction of the web browser in 1991. Voice First technology – the ability to use natural language to speak to and be spoken to by devices and software – has become at least one mandatory user interface in every business and consumer interaction.  From Voice recognition technology to Smart Speakers to Voice Assistants, it is now pervasive – in the year 2020, 50% of all searches will be by voice. From a sheer quantity standpoint, the plethora of devices from Amazon (claiming sales of 100 million gadgets at the end of 2018, plus a dozen new ones introduced for the 2019 holiday sales period) captures the stampede nature of the market.  However, by end of January, 2019, Google claimed to have Google Assistant running on 1 billion devices – and by the summer, began declaring a new version – Google Assistant 2.0.