Laurie Orlov's blog

Consider the following possible though unlikely 2017 tech advances.  On the cusp of the new year and the 2017 CES announcement extravaganza, let’s hope. And beyond CES, here are a few semi-optimistic (or glass half-full) wishes for our technology lives – and the corollary of technology media coverage. Let's consider dropping the click bait media fawning over ever little twitch of self-driving cars.* Let's ask car manufacturers to consider simpler user interfaces (like this reviewed VW) for easier-to-manipulate temperature, audio and driving controls.  And what else should we hope for?

Safety matters -- both to older adults and their loved ones.  For those who worry about the elderly, home safety monitoring technology and personal emergency response offerings provide a degree of reassurance -- following the entry of MobileHelp as one of the first, most of the viable Personal Emergency Response System (PERS) vendors in the market today have a mobile device, enabling the older adult to leave the home, walk the dog, and wear a device while on trips. In addition, automatically-generated check-in technology can provide another degree of comfort for caregiving families and professional providers. During 2016, a number of new variants of safety-related introductions were made, including, but not limited to the following launches: 

Tech announcements spew forth, fast and furiously – but most do not help older adults.  Stay tuned and hopeful if you can, to the hundreds of announcements that will pour forth in the coming weeks from CES 2017 – hopefully a number of them focused on or at least interested in the care and/or services related to an aging population – and yes, according to the CDC, if one lives to age 65, life expectancy is unchanged. In the meantime, let’s reflect on 2016, which saw the rise in awareness of future caregiver shortages, shortages in family time, but not shortages in investor money:

We buy many insurances – just in case.  Car, homeowners, apartment, flood, personal liability – all are hedges against the unknown and unwanted.  Seeing a business opportunity, insurers created a long-term care insurance market for a benefit the customer might not need for another 25 years. We can buy a service contract to cover repairs of our appliances.  Yet so it continues that when we purchase technology, carrier, or software services, the offering changes ever more quickly -- and our technology becomes obsolete. So we toss the products (and services) into the soon-forgotten gadget graveyard with 135 million mobile phones discarded in 2010 alone -- the last date for which there are EPA statistics.

From the universities and their affiliates – research about older adults.  Since this website was launched in 2008, periodic looks at who is doing what in the area of research on aging have repeatedly revealed little in the way of commercialization determination or practicality of offerings.  But funding is found – and several of these programs seem driven to reward innovation that can be commercialized – or they are funded by organizations that want and need results.  Here are four from a recent scan -- there are more, of course, and if you know one that is more robust, please send it along or provide a comment:

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.