Four Health and Aging Technology Blog Posts from November 2018

A short month saw plenty of food – and provided food for thought.  Many (54 million!) traveled during the US Thanksgiving holiday, according to AAA.  It was month to think further about concepts introduced in October about caregiving technology – why is it so unclear what it is, who makes it, what is the form factor for presenting it and how should people be using it?  (More on that in future posts.)  Meanwhile, some thoughts about living to 100 – despite the endless repetition about shrinking life expectancy in the US, those that live past age 65 may last another 30 years…or more.  Perhaps this is a major factor in why older adults defer making moves to senior living?  (Just a thought.) More from the month:

Living to 100 – will technology matter – and for whom? What is the likelihood of living to 100 for older adults? Greater than you think – can you imagine that that by 2050, the number will grow from 72,000 to 1 million in the United States – in Canada, centenarians are the fastest-growing age group.  Today there are 450,000 centenarians worldwide – with the longest disability-free life expectancy found in Okinawa, Japan. Is society ready to accommodate double the number of seniors who will be living to 100 and beyond?  What will the experience be like – today’s centenarians offer a clue to how they came to live as long – genetics, healthy lifestyle, marital status. What these individuals were not, however, is socially isolated, as many of today’s boomers may be.  Read more.

That Time of Year – Considering Technology Gifts for Older Adults. Warning -- this is not a blog post about what to give to seniors. There are plenty of click-bait websites topping the search list, like Holiday Tech Gift Ideas or the lengthy Amazon tech gift list or even a list described as The 7 Best Tech Gifts to Buy for Seniors -- really? Maybe these are the perfect gifts – or perhaps for some family members, the DailyCaring list is appropriate. Among all these lists, there might be some intriguing items that could be welcome, if not necessarily practical. Don’t forget a set of portable batteries – extremely useful for all these devices during power outages. Okay that is enough about the What – and For Whom. Read more.

Apple’s Walled Garden Bites the Wallet, but is free better?  Check out this startling sampling of Apple user complaints...Rant on. ZDNet published a list of Apple complaints posted on Reddit (which has an Apple forum of more than 800K members) – the list was eye-opening and filled with rage about (storage, connector, power) limitations. Oddly, in the center of the online article was an iPad ad. One commenter compared the Apple customer experience to buying a high-end Audi and discovering that the price did not include tires. Today Apple has 44.3% market share phone ownership – compared to Android’s 54.5% (led by Samsung and LG).   Users feel locked into Apple's ecosystem, but some commenting said it was easier to switch than people believe. Phone replacement cycles are lengthening, due to high prices for new phones coupled with apparent (or fixable) durability of existing devices. Read more.

Interested in innovation in the age-related market?  You are based in the west coast or needed to be there to do other business?  Then you may have attended Aging 2.0’s annual Optimize event this week in San Francisco to hear Dr. Joseph Coughlin of the MIT Age Lab describe his insights about the Longevity Economy. And you may have viewed the pitches for partners, spoken with investors, and learned about Aging 2.0 progress in meeting its 2017-identified Grand Challenges -- augmented in 2018 with two additional, Care Coordination and Engagement. In addition, OhmniLabs won the Global Startup Competition. With that as context, here are five startups that exhibited at Aging 2.0 – all material is drawn from the firms' own sites. Read more.

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You are receiving this blog post from the website Aging in Place Technology Watch – which tracks the market of innovation that can serve an aging population and includes trend reports, press releases, related news articles and more.

Hope to see you at the Washington Innovation in Longevity Summit next week in DC!