You may notice that it is the Christmas cheery season. [Rant on] Isn’t it great to see the sleigh-bell imagery, decoration excess, and TV Christmas-caroling crowds? Observe all the promotion, advertising and shopping discounts for must-have stuff. One guesses that Christmas must matter to self-identifying Christians, now only 75% of the US population, down from 80% in 2006. Yet the Christmas season is not about religion. It is a platform – a springboard for irrational spending, financial hangovers, 30% of annual retail sales, and the result -- goods that the recipient doesn’t want, need and can’t store – and that the giver can’t afford.
Pew new social media numbers tell a story – sort of. Now we know, that despite of -- or perhaps because of its inadvertent dissemination of fake news, Facebook usage is up. So consider that 62% of online age 65+ adults use Facebook. Also note other Pew data: only 58% of adults age 65+ are online. So translate that into 36% of the total 65+ population (or 16 million) using Facebook. Observe that 83% of American older adults aged 65+ have grandchildren. Is there a relationship between having grandchildren and needing to view updates on Facebook? Look at AARP Tek Facebook training. It is just too basic given Facebook's role as both dominant news media source and influencer.
Hopefully a road full of self-driving cars is media mythology. For the breathlessly awaiting, note Wall Street Journal quote about it being 25-30 years before self-driving cars will dominate the roadways. Apparently there are 250 million vehicles on the road today that are at least 10 years old (impressive in a country that only has 318 million people). Also appreciate that 25 years from now is when millennials will enter their 60s. Will they be just as eager then as they are now to leave the driving to a Google engineer – or will they be as cautious as today’s boomers? Will these 50-year-olds be walking slowly, bent over as they cross the street, the image of 'old.' Maybe at 50, they will not be as ignorant as this video shows them to be now.
In a week where polls were so wrong, predictive science may be shaken. Watching pollsters apologize this week for missing the obvious, folks wonder if the polling process has flaws. Pew Research concluded: most pollsters 'underestimated' support for the eventual winner. Duh. Were these polls out of whack due to 'nonresponse bias'-- that certain types of people don’t respond to surveys? Are non-responders a 'type' or were they were becoming grumpy at the phone's frequent ringing, listening to the hum of the robocaller connections to live pollsters? And if so much money was spent on conducting polls and research that did not predict the outcome, how about polling and surveys that track and predict technology uptake, particularly in the much-hyped category of digital health?
LeadingAge ended last week, leaving tea leaves about the future. This annual conference is the largest for the world of non-profit senior housing companies – and while much of it focuses on the tactical, a number of sessions tackled change, some of it wrenching for this industry. We already know that older adults in the future will find fewer and smaller nursing homes, and the ones remaining will be more focused on acute care, driven, as always, by payments, policies and the significance (big) of higher move-in ages. One session coached about 'abandonment' of strategies no longer needed. These changes necessitate innovation among the organization 6000 member companies – and the mix of services that these companies provide.
Partners’ Connected Health Symposium 2016 – note the aging opportunity. Over the years of this event, a session here and a speaker there occasionally talked about an aging society – and what it means. But aging is today’s health business reality. First, the first keynote was about the innovation opportunity – delivered by AARP’s JoAnn Jenkins. The pitch-off event ‘supporting cognitive function as we age’ also included AARP judges viewing submissions of the four finalists – and the Avatar for tracking health and exercise that won. Upcoming: the 2017 merger of this conference into the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA) and its Connected Health Conference event (formerly known as the mHealth Summit). With material from the firms themselves, 2016 innovation winners included:
Nursing home avoidance continues for both investors and care recipients. You might have read about investors cutting back on nursing home investment within ‘healthcare’ REITS. CMS and Medicare are reimbursing less for ever-shorter nursing home stays, ending their multi-year ‘billion dollar pie eating’ wave of investment. Note that the biggest chains of skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) like Signature Health Care (which has a web URL signaling LTC -- LongTerm Care) Revolution) – what might that revolution be? Consider the consumer’s first encounter with the industries for health care, long-term care (LTC), skilled nursing facility (SNF), nursing home, or post-acute facility. This terminology morass mirrors the reimbursement patterns of government agencies, which, in turn, drive investment language, behavior and labeling.
It's been a busy week that reflects growing interest in aging and new technologies. Just after the third annual Louisville Innovation Summit, some of the attendees and/or exhibitors dashed to San Francisco for the Aging 2.0 Optimize event. The founders, Stephen Johnston and Katy Fike, launched Aging 2.0 in 2012 'to pick up the pace of innovation that benefits older adults.' The program includes the Generator Ventures fund, an 'Academy' to cultivate classes annual classes of startups, distributed worldwide events, and competitions that feature finalists who participate in pitch competitions. Their flagship and well-attended Optimize event concluded today in San Francisco – with five of the exhibiting/pitching startups featured below. Information is from their websites or press materials:
Innovation featured in Louisville, Kentucky. Louisville, known for the Kentucky Derby and Bourbon, has also emerged as one of the aging care headquarter cities in the US, with some of largest providers of aging care services -- like Kindred, Signature, Atria, as well as Humana and Delta Dental, among others. This is the third year of the Louisville Innovation Summit – which provides a platform for the sponsoring organizations as well as a forum for startups and an innovation competition. Announced by the city's mayor Greg Fischer at the event, Louisville was just named as an Age Friendly Communities by one of the event's sponsors, AARP, using the framework that originated by the World Health Organization Among those exhibiting were Pharmerica, GrandCare, and LifeBio. The event also included some of the very (very) newest. All information is from the companies' or Summit website):
