Did you know that nearly 40% of seniors report having a disability? In the category of number obsession, this new snapshot of a government report caught my eye and should catch yours – it is referencing 16 million people. The report notes six types of disability reported in census data: hearing, sight, thinking and memory, walking, self-care and independent living.  From the MedlinePlus release: "People older than 85 accounted for more than 25 percent of all disabilities among seniors, although they represented only 14 percent of the overall senior population."

So you want to launch a boomer/senior, home health tech product or service.  As your new company gets ready to travel into battle at mHealth, CES, and all those 2015 launch events to-be-named-later, it is time to for you to revisit this guidance. Perhaps some time soon, your new or existing company will officially launch a new product or service, or perhaps a long-awaited, over-described and much-anticipated offering will finally ship. Here is a checklist that continues to hold true – with a few links that are merely examples:

I quit Facebook and life, such as it was, went on.  I quit because its business tactics were becoming ever so more UnFriendly-like -- from experiments with the product of us to selling your browsing history to selling your facial profile to advertisers. Then over to tracking your TV-watching habits and listening to voices on your mobile device, Facebook will soon opt into your health information -- thus forcing more privacy Opt-Outs. So time without Facebook slowly passed, then the 14-day post-deletion period -- are you sure, sure, sure? You can still re-activate! -- that grace period came and quietly went. No one, myself included, noticed my disappearance on that day. I did not request my archive of 7+ years of posts, I did not write down a list of those 300 or so folks that I had 'friended' over the years, apparently an average number for all users, and I did not note the businesses that had requested that I Like them. Without a glance back, I left all those pictures of just-cooked or about-to-be-eaten meals, graduation pictures of people I no longer knew (and thus probably don't really Like all that much), timelines, new feeds, and even groups, including alumni of gone companies from my many gone jobs. But I am not the only one departing -- looks like some younger people are getting out too.

Independa Announced AnyTVCompanion.  "Independa's integrated CloudCare meets the needs of all individuals in the care ecosystem, from the resident, to the organization and professional caregivers, to personal caregivers. With customizable modules spanning all care and residential settings, from community engagement to social engagement to integrated monitoring, Independa offers unique features across the care continuum, from independent living at home or in a community, to continuing care at home, to assisted living, memory care, short-term rehabilitation and a nursing home. Residents effortlessly access the software through the most familiar and most used device in their lives, their TV -- the new AnyTV Companion, works with any HDMI-enabled TV currently in place." Learn more at Independa.com.

Today's older adults will not get a 'check engine light for their body.' Investors in innovation worry when utilization of technology doesn't match hyper-hysterical investment pace.  So it is with Digital Health. Buried beneath broad and unclear definitions, how about that 'check engine light' metaphor -- reset it yourself, go ahead! Vague and hyper-funded, Digital Health, says Startup Health, received up to $5 billion investment just in 2014. Still there's bit of whining about startups starting but users not adopting. So what's the solution?  Don't critique investment decisions, bad product ideas and those dual dilemmas of doctor and patient disinterest.  See VC Tom Rodgers push the predicted adoption date out another 15-20 years and at the same time criticize the non-tech literacy of the old and sick of today. Says he: Digital Health will go mainstream when millennials are older and sicker.

The VA continues to "set the telehealth table." That line is from 2010 when the VHA's telehealth pioneer Adam Darkins observed: "“The patients have to do less travel, and they can get problems resolved quickly.… They feel the care coordination system is their lifeline." The program was cited as having 43,000 Veterans enrolled with a long road ahead. Fast forward to 2014 -- the VA's Telehealth program served 690,000 veterans in its most recent fiscal year, or 12% of all veterans. And the long-term study of members of the Geisinger Health Plan showed a 44% reduction in readmission rates of those monitored in a 4-year telehealth study.