A Call to Action: Healthy Aging & Technology
By Vera Rulon MS RHIT FAHIMA
“We need to ignite a whole movement around design for aging, one that inspires healthy living.” Joseph C. Kvedar, MD, The New Mobile Age: How Technology Will Extend the Healthspan and Optimize the LifespanPartners Connected Health
“Technology offers the chance to reframe aging by connecting us with the vibrant sense of self we all believe in and want to maintain no matter our age.” Charlotte Yeh, MD, AARP Services
“It’s not that aging is uncool, it’s that people living in the current moment are looking at attitudes that were relevant 20-30 years ago.” David Harry Stewart, Agei.st
How connected health supports healthy longevity
It is time to reframe how individuals approach aging by leveraging the technological and social power of “connectedness” to promote healthy longevity. There is a proliferation of new technologies and products that are being developed--from health and wellness trackers and artificial intelligence to robots and even toys--to help people live a longer, healthier life.
This can only help our health systems and individuals focus on keeping healthy and engaged in their care, and better self-managing their health. The following are four areas that will impact our ability to thrive as we age, where technology plays an important role.
Health & Wellness at All Ages We are seeing great emphasis on staying healthy at every age and a shift towards prevention of lifestyle-related conditions, such as diabetes, hypertension and obesity. Connected health technologies (i.e., activity trackers, sensors and wearables) can help people stay engaged in their health and are growing in popularity. Predicted sales for these technologies, including trackers like Fitbit and Jawbone, will triple this year. There are also technology-enabled “health scores” that keep track of things like heart rate, sleep, and food intake, and allow individuals to compare their scores to others.
Healthy Communities address feelings of isolation/loneliness, and create age-friendly environments, communities and health systems to help people live longer and healthier lives -- at any age. Isolation and loneliness, in particular, have shown to impact health. In a healthy community, social media and communication technologies connect people across generations; and smart phones connect residents to services such as Uber and Lyft to make transportation easily available.
Extending Independence tackles challenges like mobility, functional decline and frailty, and support independent living for as long as possible. For example, connected health solutions, such as alarm systems, home monitoring, telehealth products, communications and robotics can work effectively to extend independence.
Caregiving supports individuals caring for older family members or friends, older caregivers, and caregivers in the workplace, including remote caregiving. A long-standing challenge for older adults is management of chronic diseases. While connected health technologies exist, adoption remains slow in many areas of the world.
For example, in a number of countries, older people do not have access to the internet. In Turkey and Mexico, about 90 percent of people 65-plus have never used the Internet; according to Joann Jenkins, CEO of AARP, in the United States, 30% of people over 65 have never been online.
There is a real and urgent need for collaborative efforts across diverse organizations, with input from aging consumers, to solve this crisis and find effective digital solutions to achieve healthy longevity. As Dr. Joe Kvedar writes in his book, The New Mobile Age, we can be “smarter together.”
The National Academy of Medicine is doing just this with a major global initiative called the Grand Challenge for Healthy Longevity. The initiative has two components: a series of inducement prizes and awards to stimulate innovation and transform the longevity field; and a comprehensive global roadmap report that will assess the challenges and opportunities of global aging with recommendations for action.
Learn more about how personal connected health technologies are helping people live vital, engaged and healthier lives in their later years, as well as the NAM initiative and other collaborations at Aging & Technology Workshop hosted by PCHAlliance at HIMSS18.
Aging & Technology: A Call to Action
Thursday, March 8, 2:00pm-5:00pm
The Venetian I Bellini 2005/2006, Las Vegas, NV
The goal of this workshop is to highlight the latest innovations and important research underway to create technology-enabled solutions that promote health and wellness throughout the lifespan, and identify potential collaborations supporting healthy longevity: a call to action.
Experts in aging will inform participants on four key topics: extending independence through personal connected health, caregiving and chronic disease management, leveraging technology to sustain health and wellness, and healthy communities through connectedness and smart tech.
Speakers and panelists include Charlotte Yeh, MD, Chief Medical Officer, AARP Services; Jody Holtzman, Longevity Ventures; David Harry Stewart, Agei.st; Michael Birt, Senior Advisor to the President, National Academy of Medicine; Amy Bucher, MadPow; Wen Dombrowski, MD, Catalaize; Davis Park, Executive Director Front Porch Innovation Center, and panelists from CDW, Humana, Orbita and other innovative organizations.