[grow_thumb image=”https://telecareaware.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/dhealth2017_300x75_2.png” thumb_width=”200″ /]This Editor attended last Wednesday’s (10 May) d.Health Summit 2017–Successful Aging 2030, sponsored by the University of Rochester and West Health. It was an expansive, well-organized and attended seminar at the New York Academy of Sciences at the impressive new 7 World Trade Center. Panels covered economic, housing, health outcomes, government policy, technology innovation, and investing factors key to one central fact: that in the US, nearly 20 percent of the population will be over 65 by 2030. Worldwide, the numbers are already much higher as of 2015: Japan (26 percent), Italy (22), Greece, Germany, Portugal (21) with nearly all of Europe already near that magic number (World Bank).

What was dispiriting to this Editor was that in her now 11 years in related health tech (telehealth and telecare), the status of many issues were the same as in 2006. The inadequacy of ‘aging in place’ supports and “assisted living”; a culture that brutally devalues people as they get older starting after 50; a belief that whiz-bang technology will fix it, but it doesn’t; the non-recognition of ‘aging-consumer-driven healthcare’; the lack of attention from investors because aging is not glamorous–are still there. What was hopeful? The candid recognition of these factors and the open discussion around them. There was a blunt admission expressed somewhat differently by two speakers, June Fisher MD of UC Berkeley and Charlotte Yeh of AARP, that without co-designing solutions with older people, we will get nowhere, and that imposing ‘fixes’ from the outside hasn’t and isn’t going to work. We also have a new middle age of 55-75, but the work market and employers have not adapted to that lengthening of productiveness, with the ‘pasture’ of retirement still pegged theoretically at 65.

Highlights of each panel:

The Longevity Economy, or the Silver Economy, was estimated by Merrill Lynch‘s Surya Kolluri at $7 trillion, with a surprising 90 percent of package goods spending done by 65+, and not just that but also areas such as home improvement. But healthcare spending is about 200 percent over the population average, and caregiving factors into that as well. There are profit opportunities for companies in this market, including developing/future areas such as robotics. (more…)