The innovaging economy

On a regular basis, you will see prognostications and articles about sick care future directions and trends and how you can take advantage of them. Here's my list.

One that almost everyone agrees on is the global aging population and the dropping fertility rates.

For example, Japan has one of the world's fastest-growing elderly populations and a tight labor market. The combination of these factors is driving innovation and spawning startups in the elder care space. And like the Walkman and e-mail displaying cellphones-the resulting devices may go global over the next few years. Of the 92 Japanese startups seeking to be valued at $1 billion or more, 25 are focused on health care. Most of the backing doesn't come from venture capitalists, but from large companies looking for growth businesses. For example, Tatsuya Takahashi got support from Sharp and Canon when he co-founded Z-Works in 2015, seeking to improve patient monitoring after he missed being present when his grandmother and father died. Two years later he formed a partnership with a unit of insurance company Sompo Holdings to put his gear into more than 100 nursing homes in Japan. At a nursing home outside Tokyo, whose residents average 86 years old, 48 rooms have been equipped with four devices that monitor the occupants and stream data to the nurses' station using software designed by Z-Works.

Here's a story about the growing numbers of those in the sandwich generation and the costs involved to both when kids move back home after graduation.

A 2014 study by the Pew Research Center found that 52% of the US residents in their 60s are financially supporting either a parent or an adult child, up from 45% in 2005. Things are not that much different in other countries.

Here a glimpse of the future of aging according to a recent Deloitte analysis and the opportunities it presents.

Entrepreneurs in almost every industry are noticing and trying to ride the silver tsunami all the way to the bank. Look for;

1. High tech solutions, using gerontechnologies. Alexa, where did I leave my keys? When is my next doctor's appointment? Maybe you can get a deal on Black Friday on a robot for your loved one.
2. High touch solutions, creating alternative living arrangements from tiny homes in your back yard, to over 55 communities to smart cities
3. Anti-loneliness and social isolation solutions
4. Investment funds targeted to solving the problems of the aging population
5. The rise of aging not-for-profits
6. Finding ways to improve the caregiver experience
7. Rethinking sick care jobs, such as community care workers
8. Social media and the entertainment industry, along with their advertisers, used to ignore anyone who was not between the ages of 18-24. That has changed as we see more and more "older" actors and models and aging themes reflected in movies, plays and literature.
9. The financial services industry continues to scramble to capture more and more of people worried about outliving their savings, including seniors and their kids taking care of them.
10. Sick care IT and digital health entrepreneurs are creating ways to help older patients share their information with family members and other care givers.
11. Senior travel and hospitality offerings
12. Senior dating apps

There is always opportunity when edge technologies and trends collide. Best Buy will try to capitalize on where loneliness, DIY medicine, remote sensing and remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, aging at home and consumer medical electronics meet. However, using these products will , for the 20-25% of those in rural towns with out broadband access, require closing the sick care digital divide.

Of course, politicians are pandering to papa, too.

But when you look deep within, from a human perspective, the business of aging too often falls short of delivering solutions that meet fundamental societal needs. Aging has been good for business, but can we honestly say that business has been good for aging?

It used to be that if you wanted to take the social pulse of the nation, you would watch sit-coms. Now you have to stream and binge on Netflix.

So what is the future? You tell me. In the future, the top jobs are robot engineer and elder caregiver.

Arlen Meyers, MD, MBA is the President and CEO of the Society of Physician Entrepreneurs on Twitter@ArlenMD and Co-editor of Digital Health Entrepreneurship