Beyond today’s AgeTech – Buy once, serve many with software personalization

Some have said the concept of ‘AgeTech’ can be a bit depressing.  It is especially bleak when you look at the startup portfolio which aggregates a variety of tech categories to help older adults in their later years, Making Aging Easier for Everyone, and includes offerings that tackle deficits like issues with mobility, fall detection/prevention, caregiving, Alzheimer’s, vision, and many aspects of health. AgeTech tools include a few for the heavily-invested category of Digital Health ($3 Billion in Q1 2025).  All these products, all very useful, fill gaps in the general consumer market.  Consumer product designers tend not to start the day thinking about the older adult as a market segment. Instead, older adults are segmented into their roles -- older adults are the care recipients (B2B healthcare and senior living), as well as individuals with disabilities and needs for greater accessibility and/or services.  All useful.

Consider another future – one in which all consumer products are designed for all ages. In this market world, described in a long-disappeared report,  products would be intentionally designed for all, one version, with extensions, customizations, add-ons that match specific requirements, including interfaces for wheelchairs, walkers, services for the hearing-impaired, blind and low vision.  Just as today you can customize a smartphone or tablet for specific needs, modify a house to meet changing requirements, adjust the TV for  vision or hearing changes, and so on – in the future everything we use or interact with can be adjusted.  In this world, the devices we already own will carry us from our fifties to our seventies -- and well beyond.

Personalization will take on a new meeting in that world. The users will want to have persistent opt-in profiles and user experiences that cross devices and websites.  Instead of the irritating world of two-factor password verification, the new world would know us by our willingness to share a view of our face or voice to authenticate – just like a banking app does today. Why should it be easier to use a banking app than it is to sign on to an insurer, health portal or airline? A good start -- ChatGPT now has a memory capability -- it will retain topics of conversation that you specifically request. This is a step towards a profile about ourselves that could drive interactions across multiple software platforms. 

Assistive/accessibility features will be available, even if not used, in all products. No reason to have a different device to control the environment, whether for a TV or around a home.  Software is available today that can accomplish most every useful function – except that it is often tied to specific (aka proprietary) hardware. Consider the longtime inability to join a Face Time call on an Android device, which finally now feasible today, if clumsy. There is no reason that this should have dragged on for so long, with the major catalyst for interoperability coming from European governments. Should that really have taken so long?  Why did that effort not originate in the US?  Lobbyists? Future lobbying will be about expanding, not preventing, access -- those that limit it will be noticed and their behavior will be publicized. The flip-side, that is those that try hard to improve accessibility for all users, will be celebrated. Consider the ability for the blind to use standard (not specialty) smartphones, with software-enabled accessibility improvements that made a general purpose device work for them. Still, as this article notes -- it was a good start, but there is a ways to go.