Home Care

October – when trade shows ramped up; vacations ramped down. Behold the press release.  As the season of shows begins, rental trucks with exhibits roll up, presenters rev up their presentation skills and the big decisions are made.  To walk around the stage or not?  Take questions in real time or answer them afterward? Announce the partnerships in one release or multiple?  These and other imponderables are perplexing.  And as some events loom ahead, for example, LeadingAge, Aging 2.0 in a few, and then the cacophony of CES. Can you imagine the sonic racket from those smart speakers? Anyway, here are the six blog posts from October.

Maybe Best Buy has an idea worth copying from Amazon. In 2015, Amazon introduced Amazon Home Services, which fairly recently added tech services, including sending a local tech professional to your home. The work might be setting up a router; connections for 4 devices; password protection; and use and troubleshooting instructions. Recently, Best Buy launched Assured Living, a service to help long-distance adult children monitor older family members’ well-being, including setting them up with smart home technologies (costing as much as $1000 for all of them), possibly some of the list is in the ‘official’ definition. Oh yeah, and there is a service charge of $1/day.

As August winds down, startups wind up.   For some, maybe they still think that summer is winding down and all is quiet in business and beyond. But no -- back to school, back to work, and back to starting companies.  Aging 2.0 finalists have been announced, conference media organizations are ramping up, and a few leaves begin to turn – fall is in clearly the air and around the corner.  Before August disappears altogether and the media engines shift into gear, here are five announcements of new technologies designed to help older adults and/or their caregivers.  All material is derived from the websites of the firms:

Largest city in the US shows a path for an aging society.  New York has long been a host and leader in supporting older adults, from being a WHO Age Friendly City, to acknowledging the presence of Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs) starting in 1994, to being the home of the first Virtual Senior Center (VSC). In addition, technology leadership initiatives have been offered via SelfHelp in Queens, and Senior Planet, a technology exploration center that offers tech training for adults 60+. So many people aging, many needing the skills to find and keep jobs. So they utilize services like OATS and Senior Planet, or senior centers, training in libraries, carrier stores and online sites like AARP TeK Academy.