Aging in Place Technology Status

Someone asked me to summarize the situation with Technology and Aging in Place.
I share my Rambling reply:

1. There is a lot of interest and promise. PERS (lifeline) is the only thing making significant inroads to people’s homes. A few pill minders are also working.

2. The VA, using Health Buddy, is reaping benefits, especially based on their excellent care manager training program. They are a single payer system.

3. The next level, more substantial monitoring and two way interface (like health buddy) have trouble getting into homes. There is some use by assisted living, recognizing increasing staffing efficiencies. The ‘final mile’ delivery, setup, training, troubleshooting- (ie geek squad) is really missing and the tech folks don’t want to do it.

4. People want to grab the monitoring space, seems like a good place to invest without some of the headaches of product developing and marketing, but it is premature.

5. It will come, will be closely related to eligibility and funding, but no one knows when or exactly how. It is advanced in Europe because of the payer system. Once communities (at whatever scale) take responsibility for health/payment, they see the value and invest. The UK has regulated monitoring centers.

I wrote a series of blogs about it a while ago. I reviewed them, they are still a pretty food synopsis.

Laurie Orlov is a leader in this space. Our point of view is pretty closely aligned.

CAST, division of AAHSA, pushed by Intel, is about tech standards for interface. They have slowed down, although their tech house design was a recent hit. There is a lot of research going on at universities.

There is the barest start at the new design oriented marketing research organizations.