Future of Aging: Pandemic Edition. Part 5 - Gerontechnologies

This blog is part 5 of a 6-part series entitled ‘The Future of Aging: Pandemic Edition’. Follow along as we explore how the ~20 shifts across 5 themes in our new book, Future of Aging, have fared post COVID-19. The inaugural blog to set up the series is here, as well as appraisals of Chapter 1 (Community), Chapter 2 (Healthcare),  Chapter 4 (Economy) and Chapter 5 (Identity of Aging).

Quick recap of The Future of Aging book

Our book is the culmination of more than a year of research and discovery of several hundred signals that almost everything we think, know and believe about aging in the future will be nothing like it has been in the past. We packaged those signals into 5 emergent themes, organized into 5 chapters:

1. Community
2. Healthcare Interventions
3. Gerontechnologies
4. The Economy
5. Identity of Aging

This blog goes deeper into the shifts we explored in Chapter 3: The Promise of Gerontechnologies, where we looked at how technologies are both adding years to your life, while adding life to your years. The 4 key shifts we uncovered in our research were:

What has changed across the 4 shifts underpinning the future of Gerontechnologies?

This chapter was about how emerging technologies of all types will enable aging, living and healing in a manner, magnitude (and pace) that is unprecedented for our species. Given the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on the elderly - physically and sociologically - there was little-to-no room for the major shifts enabled by gerontechnologies to get traction, as the whole world has been focused on virus containment amongst the elderly. Therefore, overall this theme of the book landed a NEUTRAL in our appraisal of the impact of COVID-19, which means there were islands of accelerated momentum in some areas, amidst a sea of no (or receding) change. If we further unpack each of the 4 shifts, there are nuanced differences in the impact of COVID-19:

Other than growing momentum behind shift IV, the promise of gerontochology is relatively status quo post-COVID for the other 3 shifts. The behavioural drivers behind the acceleration of shift IV (aging in place, instead of in institutions) were already described in depth in the third blog where we explored how home is the desired destination for aging now more than ever due to the personal risk of contact associated with the highly contagious COVID-19 virus. Let's go a little deeper and explore how gerontechnologies to enable elderly citizens to age in place have experienced a massive uptake compared to the pre-COVID baseline.

• Transportation - Uber and Lyft launched services offering free rides to appointments or food banks, or to deliver prepared food to the home.
• Home delivery - Gophr (UK) the courier network pivoted to using their convoy of delivery workers to get essential goods to people. A Scottish dog walking company pivoted its app to enable delivering groceries and medicine to its elderly clients, free of charge. And major German grocery chain Migros now offers a home delivery service for old people who cannot leave their home.
• Drones - A startup in Ireland, a group in Chile, and major US companies UPS + CVS drug store launched drone delivery services to bring food and medical supplies to hard-to-reach elderly citizens.
• Volunteer matching - BlaBlaCar service in Spain pivoted to launch BlaBlaHelp, where an app connects a community of vetted volunteers to elderly who need help.
• Remote health monitoring & diagnostics - There has been an uptake of remote health monitoring systems, as clinicians and patients seek to avoid facility-based healthcare interactions. This has been especially emphasized for COVID positive patients - several health delivery orgs launched "COVID @ Home" offerings that include a home-based remote monitoring kit with technologies for self-measuring vitals.

Many wearable/ remote monitoring startup companies also pivoted their products and services to offer remote COVID testing for home bound elderly. E.g. Myant smart clothing maker in Toronto, and Decorte Future Industries in Cambridge. Swiss-based Ava Women and Finland’s Oura ring are also evolving their fertility bracelets and smart rings respectively to accurately detect Covid-19 transmission.

Finally, as already explored in detail in blog 3 about the future of Community & Aging post-pandemic, older adults were forced into social isolation, which also forced many to embrace digital tools to connect with family, friends and services. Smart phones, tablets, internet, social media, Zoom, Facetime and game-playing apps like Skribble.io and House Party became the only lifeline to the outside world for many.

Digital divide, wider inequity gaps

Alongside the benefits of connection and access to goods and services that gerontechnologies have unlocked during the pandemic there is a parallel phenomenon of further inequity and marginalization of older adults who do not have access to digitally-enabled services. The disparate access between the technology "have's" and "have nots" is largely for 3 reasons:

1. Income - More than 65% of seniors are on a fixed income, and many cannot own a tablet or smart phone, cannot afford app-based services, or cannot pay for internet access. And many certainly cannot afford more sophisticated gerontechnologies such as voice assistants, remote monitoring hardware, personal robots, and drone delivery services. Further, even for those elderly citizens who do have smartphones, tablets and Wifi, the hardware is often on an older operating system, or they do not have enough internet bandwidth to effectively use the available gerontechnologies.
2. Rurality - On top of the social isolation triggered by lockdown policies, many older adults live outside of urban centres in regions that have sketchy or non-existent Wifi access. They need the promise of gerontechnologies more than most, but cannot access them because of an infrastructure challenge in their local geography.
3. Digital literacy - Most software and hardware tools are designed for middle-aged white men ... there is a long way to go for consumer-facing gerontechnologies to reach the level of UX that meets elderly citizens where they are at - audibly (hearing loss), visibly (vision loss), tactile-wise (think touchpads, keys, buttons, chargers), cognitively, and in their natural language.

While a much wider base of elderly citizens have benefited from gerontechnologies to survive the pandemic, the access gap is now even wider for aging adults in the above sub-segments.

So, while a much wider base of elderly citizens have benefited from gerontechnologies to survive the pandemic (and have built a new-found digital acumen), the access gap is now even wider for aging adults in the above sub-segments. Perhaps the best gift that this pandemic offered in this realm is that is exposed the risk of inequities from gerontechnologies that are not designed up front to account for income level, rurality and digital literacy of elderly citizens. We have been inspired with how some organizations stepped up to help close the digital divide for seniors during the pandemic:

• Barclays (UK) introduced new online resources for seniors to improve their digital skills within the Digital Eagles platform, where ~14k current and former Barclays employees teach local communities to be more confident with technology and move forward in a digital world.
• Lloyds (UK) teamed up with three local nonprofit organizations to offer practical and emotional support to customers over 70 yrs of age by donating 2,000 tablets to keep them connected with everyday digital activities.  
• Canadian telco Telus gave away more than 10,000 smart devices with $0 rate plans for Canadian seniors and other populations lacking digital access.

There is so much more to do to create gerentochologies that are accessible and usable by all.

Looking ahead: Adjusting Your Pathway Towards the Future of Aging

The Future of Aging book provides an evidence-based, comprehensive roadmap to guide anyone who has a stake in policies, products or services for an aging society. I’ve highlighted above how the terrain for gerontechnologies supporting aging has been altered by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The rapid pivots, product and service innovation, market entry and subsequent wide uptake of these digitally enabled services during COVID has opened up entirely new channels for older adults to use gerontechnologies to augment and extend their lives beyond what the analog physical realm can achieve on its own. Moreover, the lion’s share of the (health) impact of COVID-19 has been on aging adults, their needs, aspirations and voice are more than ever in the spotlight, globally. This will bode well for product and service innovators in aging tech who now have an even more activated user to design for; and a user that has now had some tangible experience with home-based technologies to support aging in place.

For the other insights and commentary about the Future of Aging book, check out our blog site.