I was surprised at an article in today's Times that offered no solutions to the problem it raised: that more men take the lead in caring for their elderly parents. From the article: "The Alzheimer’s Association and the National Alliance for Caregiving estimate that men make up nearly 40 percent of family care providers now, up from 19 percent in a 1996 study by the Alzheimer’s Association.
This article about taking seniors to a Christmas orchestra concert was a bit depressing. It made me think about all the seniors who can't get into or out of this or any other bus -- or who are unlikely to be asked to go to a concert. It especially reminded me of my late mother who had Alzheimer's and spent her last six years in a nursing home.
The home monitoring market for seniors is a potentially converging set of product vendors, some with medical interests and origins that may over time be marketed for use in advance of medical need -- these include HealthHero, Honeywell HomMed, Dovetail Health (even linking to nurse monitoring).
A market research firm, SharpBrains, which bills itself as "The Brain Fitness Authority," has posted a product evaluation checklist for determining whether a brain or cognitive fitness software product is the 'right' product for you. By the way, SharpBrains estimates this software market was $225 million in 2007.
Move over, Jitterbug. An intriguing new cell phone announcement popped up on my screen this week that could -- with some in-your-face marketing -- give the cell phone super marketer some competition in the senior cell phone market.
Adam Bosworth is a long-time tech veteran who co-founded Google and Google Health) and CEO of a to-be-launched company 'to help people engage in their own health' Keas. He noted that since lifestyles are dramatically worse than they were in 1986 (only one state has no significant problem
Professor Cass Sunstein, Professor at Harvard Law School, an articulate if somewhat low-key speaker, introduced (from his book “Nudge”) the concept of Libertarian Paternalism which utilizes 'choice architecture'.
We are headed to a Consumer-Driven Healthcare Market that is personalized and integrated, with connected healthcare lifting limits of demand and job lock, staying in a job in order to retain health insurance -- so says Regina Herzlinger, Professor, Harvard Business School and author of Who Killed Healthcare? Her predictions: First and foremost, employers will cash you out of your job-locking employer-based system into a consumer-based market, where you buy you own health insurance.
The session topic: Social Networks, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations, delivered byClay Sharkey (Author, Consultant, and Professor at NYU). Clay Sharkey pointed out the fallacy of ‘trusted systems.’ Instead, he noted that information goes to where the trust is – using examples of how e-mail replaced the original purpose of the Internet -- Telnet and FTP -- within 3 months of its existence.
I love the idea of 'brain wellness'! Don't we all want our brains to be well? Exercising them right along with our calf raises and seated arm curls. But how? And with what? We certainly know that web surfing helps but there is an entire product range out there from game workstations and technology, but also software that is purely for improving mind health and vigor.
I just saw a checklist on caring.com for helping adult children who worried about aging parents and whether they should stay in their own homes. For those thinking about these issues, there is plenty of advice on the site that can deepen thinking and identify ways to help.
You'd think a symposium on 'connected health', a Boston conference with 1000 attendees that included investors (who warned that there was going to be a bloodbath of failed startups) as well as vendors and tech-aware doctors would be inspiring, but the actual experience was quite the opposite.
