Connect feature in NYTimes.com - The New Old Age Blog - "Old Age, New Gizmos"
When the vast Consumer Electronics Show, underway this week in Las Vegas, adds an exhibition called Silvers Summit, devoted to new products for the aging and their caregivers, brace yourselves. American tech companies, taking notice of the unmistakable demographic trends, have launched a surge.
“When you have a growing market segment, everybody wants a piece of the action,” said Majd Alwan, director of the Center for Aging Services Technologies, itself just six years old.
What’s coming?
An Ohio firm called Connect 4 Healthcare was born when its C.E.O. Neil Moore wanted to stay in touch with his father-in-law’s nursing home. Staffers would tell him “‘nobody’s available right now; we’ll call you back.’ And they’d call back when I was on a plane or in a meeting,” Mr. Moore recalled. “It was just frustrating.”
The Connect for Healthcare system gives family members access to a site where paid caregivers enter regular status updates about how a resident is faring. Families choose the specific matters they want to track, from appetite to socialization, and can also use the service to ask questions and raise concerns; most choose to receive the information by e-mail or text message. A small but growing number of home care agencies, nursing homes and assisted living facilities in Ohio, Texas and California have thus far signed on to provide such updates.
