Older adults need more tech-enabled ways to connect with family, care providers and services, the Aging and Health Technology Watch’s report has found.
The research has looked at the benefits of voice assistants and their underlying artificial intelligence capabilities and has shown that they could help mitigate social isolation among older adults and enable access to information from home.
The rising aging population, along with a critical shortage of care workers, have determined founders to come up with innovations, including ‘touchless’, voice-enabled and AI-enabled technologies.
Beyond playing music and reading books, voice and AI capabilities will help older adults more easily obtain products and services they want, speak to friends and family, and improve their wellbeing in old age.
AI will be applied to improving wellbeing in old age. New features will be offered based on utilisation of existing capabilities and comparisons between an individual’s status and the general population will be made prior to a suggestion about health, activity, and engagement.
According to the management consulting firm, McKinsey, 2021’s usage of telehealth platforms was 38 times that from pre-pandemic and many health practices now offer telehealth as a visit option.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is also on a growth trajectory, becoming a service offered by some home care agencies.
However, the pandemic has placed a spotlight on major gaps in senior housing use of technology.
With occupancy still down as a result of the pandemic, it is expected that 2022 will see the industry make more technology investments, with broadband access, video, telehealth capabilities and digital marketing having a growing importance.
Around 56 percent of US adults are using voice assistants as of January 2022, but many are still unable to access technology. Tech vendors are likely to promote a gaggle of gadgets to mitigate barriers, emphasising voice and ‘no-touch’ offerings over tablets.
Mitigating fall risk is another increasingly important for the wellbeing of older adults and new offerings have emerged recently seeking to detect falls without a wearable using radar and AI.
The Aging and Health Technology Watch’s report is the only market research report to look at how voice and AI capabilities can be specifically applied to benefit older adults and shows growing technology dependence among the aging population.