Six Tech (Aging and Health) Blog Posts from July 2018

Voice First technology – triaging the healthcare opportunity.  This week’s Voice of Healthcare Summit in Boston offered up some intriguing attempts to create new Voice First interfaces that inform patients, streamline work, and demonstrate potential (like Answers by Cigna) in versions 2, 3 and beyond.  One of the most intriguing presentations – KidsMD – a Boston Children’s Hospital ‘accelerator’ initiative begun in 2016 and is winning over the staff.  The organization is clearly committed to using Voice First interfaces for patients, for internal questions (“Who is the Charge Nurse on 7 South?”), for hands-free operating room checklists, for post-discharge guidance and for home health (100,000 interactions to date).  They’ve added a skill called AskICU that highlights the potential for ‘hands free, eyes free’ questions that have easy (but difficult to find) answers, like available beds on a floor, or detailed answers like “Medication dosage details from the Code Cart”.   The other hospitals in Boston are well aware of the innovation at Children’s, but other than experiments (like one at Beth Israel Deaconess), nothing of the scope of KidsMD has materialized.  In other blog posts from July:

The crushing clutter of the Internet -- as irritating as non-stop telemarketing calls.  The business model of the Internet is crushing us.   Rant on. We could start with Twitter, which is deleting millions of bots, trolls, and other fake accounts (often with automated software generating hundreds of tweets per day).  This is raising concerns over the company's growth and true number of monthly users. But it's not raising concern about the business and social value of Twitter. Has anyone looked at the age distribution of Twitter users? Only 8% are 65+, and the biggest block is aged 18-29.  Consider that its share price and profit of $61 million in Q1 2018 are tied to growth in "legitimate human users -- the only ones capable of responding to the advertising that is the main source of revenue for the company." Translate: capable of responding because they are human 18-29 year-olds, not necessarily because they have money to spend. Read more here.

Four issues that should matter much more – to consumers and tech firms.  Dog days – these are the hottest days of summer, according to that Oracle of modern culture, Wikipedia.  As the glow and racket from fireworks fade, it's time to mull over the thoughts that zipped by in recent months, perhaps not noticed, but are worth another consideration.  All four of these posts are about our technology life, as shoppers in stores as recently as July 1, our experience with user interfaces that are designed for none, catching up on the hype/hope/fading hope about self-driving cars, and finally, the only thing that can terrorize a company the size of Walmart – Jeff Bezos and Amazon.   Read more here.

Five recent Caregiving technology offerings from 2018. What newcomers have entered the market?  Besides ‘longevity market new media’ like Stria (former Next Avenue) that provided a splash of cold water for startups and investors in the older adult space.  Although there is little evidence that any investors are bullish about the general older adult market – despite AARP documentation and various books to the contrary, innovators continue to create new offerings to help older adults live better lives.  Here are five recent and soon-launching offerings to help – content is from the websites of the firms or articles about them. Read more here.

Speaking Up About Health and Wellness. Voice First is changing health and wellness offerings today – and it is just the beginning. Already the predicted capability to speak a request or instruction without having to type or tap on a device – known as Voice First – has transformed how we interact with technology. If we can speak a command to play music, control the lights, or open the shades benefits accrue to the elderly who live alone. This technology can help those who are blind or have macular degeneration, and it can help those with disabilities. AARP and Optum have initiated pilots to determine if this technology can help mitigate social isolation and improve health outcomes for the elderly. And note experiments and pilots for applying Voice First technologies for health and wellness. Read more here.

With fewer caregivers, what’s the (tech-enabled) plan?  You saw the headline – America is running out of family caregivers.  The numbers are daunting.  Says Ken Dychwald in the WSJ article:  “We’re going to have to look to nontraditional care,” says Ken Dychtwald, CEO of Age Wave, a consulting firm.  "Older adults, he says, may have to take in boarders, who can help with shopping and repairs, or rely more on monitoring devices and delivery services.”  This latest article was based on a recent study (part of a series) from Merrill Lynch and Age Wave.  But is the issue low growth in potential family caregivers?  Or is the real issue the low growth of population in the appropriate age range (45-64) of people to provide care to people who are aged 80+? Read more here.

Are seniors different from other people? Google discovers seniors (sort of) and thus a market is maybe born. There was a breathlessness to the CNBC article on July 23, 2018 – Google is mulling older adult applications for its Nest product line – particularly in senior housing settings, hopefully at less cost per installation than its website pricing.  And gee whiz, one of the uses is pathway lighting to find the bathroom – presumably replacing motion-sensing night lights for $7.97 from Walmart. Up next, predicting life-threatening falls, perhaps as an alternative to Philips CareSage or BioSensics Frailty Meter, for example.  Google execs qualified our enthusiasm, per the article: "The ideas are only in the discussion stage and may not find their way into shipping products." Since his role at Google is to do 'something interesting' – perhaps this may not turn out to be. Read more here.

[And check out Aging in Place Technology Watch directly for this and other blog posts.]