Laurie Orlov's blog

The future of housing for seniors – or the future of senior housing? Innovators are approaching the tech-enabled future of homes for seniors from multiple directions – support for people with dementia, new approaches to tech in a senior housing campus, new systems for aging at home, and new kinds of age-friendly housing. Innovation is sorely needed -- considering that current approaches to senior housing, whether in assisted living (too expensive) or age-segregated communities (too isolated and/or risky) may not be right for everyone.  Here are some other recently noted housing approaches, material is from sites or news:

What are the rules and what are the criteria? Look through these grouped press releases -- all posted here because they (or at least the reminder-to-drink-water concept that is represented) could/should be useful to an older adult or someone who cares for them. It is intriguing that we are at a perceived point in technology utilization for app-to-app communication between an adult child and parent. Also Tochtech is reminiscent of Cookstop, noted here in 2011.  Comments are welcome.

It is a given -- startups want to hear from venture capital panel pundits.  Hindsight being 20-20, those who help make venture capital investments clearly have panel potential. You are a startup and what you want most to hear is why VCs invest and why they seem alternately enamored with consumer-oriented tech or enterprise/health tech.  In fact, you could puzzle a bit over the way newly-generated terminology overtakes ideas that did not do well with VCs or anyone else. For example, what happened to the 2001 prediction of the rise-fall-rise of eHealth?  

What is a Silicon Valley unicorn?  In case you didn't know, that's a startup valued at more than $1 billion. No surprise that the original definition references a mythical animal.  Perhaps the essential characteristic, then, may be that it was mythical.  Let’s consider that in December, 2015, the $66 billion market cap of one of these app-based myth-makers had exceeded that of 80% of the companies in the Fortune 500. Okay, so following a recent trip to Silicon Valley, it seems important to snatch reality back from the jaws of terminology buzz, recognizing that: 

Firestorm from the American Medical Association.  A few weeks ago, the CEO of the AMA, Dr. James Madara, said what few others will say: "…the explosion of direct-to-consumer digital health products, to apps of mixed quality – it’s the digital snake oil of the early 21st century."  And if that weren’t enough, he compared the technology innovations today (including "ineffective" EHRs) as analogous to the challenges confronting 'quackery' when the AMA was founded in 1847.  Then came the chorus of rebuttals from health IT folk and the Boston Brahmins of digital health, including Dr. Joseph Kvedar ("telemedicine is unstoppable") and Dr. John Halamka ("no snake oil to see here!").  But adults are downloading health apps – in one study, at least half of the surveyed population had downloaded at least one.  Using, not so much.

Consumers don't care about products -- they want solutions. What year were those words said? "The senior home monitoring market has historically been more aligned with home security and security installer/dealers than with the hands-on consumer/family. But in fact, home security dealers were not well-prepared to market to seniors. Now innovation (versus Digital Health quackery) and price disruption are pushing those offerings into the hands of consumers, where what matters is simplicity. And what matters is ease of integration into what exists PLUS availability of training on how to use it."  See how the advice from a previous research report stands up to scrutiny -- published exactly two years ago -- repeated today with new links right before the 2016 Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit:

As the event season winds down, let’s reflect.  Has there been a technology breakthrough this year?  Consider the 2016 conferences, including CES,  JP Morgan Health Investing, AARP LivePitch, 1 Million Cups Coffee Pitch, Digital Health Summer Summit, and soon, the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit. Just before the fall season kicks off with more startups and events, what has been interesting, new, and/or recent in the way of announcements? Here are five, all text from their own media/material:

Why does Sunrise Senior Living have a blog?  Actually, it appears to have been updated today.  You might think that a company in the residential senior care business wouldn’t.  And further, Brookdale can be followed on Twitter.   So can JoAnn Jenkins of AARP – that makes great sense – AARP is a content/media company.  So what’s up when you can’t find any reasonably current content, or worse, the site offers up a suggestion to meet up in…2015? Or when the last tweet from a company that is still in business and is doing quite well – but their last Tweet was in 2012?

Eyes, ears and status matter nearly as much as care for families of seniors.  Imagine having to hire a private duty care worker to visit your family member in senior housing, notice today’s status and provide an email about what’s going on for long-distance family. Seem silly? Yet there has long been a ‘tree falls in the forest’ communication problem for families of memory-challenged residents, whether in home care or senior living. Yet providing simple status of loved ones (did she eat, did he go for a walk, how is the skin rash) is so simple. For many of the circumstances in which assisted living or home care services are engaged, the care recipient cannot clearly communicate the activities of the day, let alone if a rash is healing. So are family expectations forcing a change in the way care status is communicated? No data exists. And that communication is not an attribute in care search sites like Caring.com.

Last year’s VC investment in the tech-enabled home care segment caught industry attention.  2015 was a banner year of capital infusion for the 2.0 version of the home care industry. As Honor revved up with a $20 million investment, Home Hero raised a $23 million round and launched a software platform and converted workers to W2 employees. CareLinx received a $3 million round in May and then just into the new year, Hometeam upped the ante with a $27 million VC round.  Meanwhile, at the start of 2016, an eye-popping market sizing from AARP/Parks Associates of $279 billion for all things caregiving-related further underlined a perceived business opportunity, including the projection of an additional 1 million jobs in home care.