Technology can make aging safer

Jean Dickow, 78, never wanted the latest whiz-bang technology. But her gadget-friendly daughter, who lives in Norway, was worried that Dickow would fall in her apartment and no one would know.

So Dickow was persuaded to put on an Apple Watch look-alike called the Lively safety watch, which has an alert button to push if she falls. Wearing a medical alert pendant that screamed old age was not an option, she said.

Besides displaying the time, the watch is also a step counter and even has a medication alert. But Dickow especially likes the watch’s chic look. “My club members ask me where I got the Apple Watch,” Dickow, who lives in Oakland, Calif., said with a smile. The watch costs about $50 and the monthly cost runs from $28 to $35 a month; www.mylively.com.

Gadgets that can ease the burdens of aging are slowly beginning to appear in older adults’ homes and communities.

They are designed to respond to vital needs, including caregiving, transportation and living more safely at home. Technology specialists say that these new devices can help older adults stay in their homes longer and more cheaply, and even help prevent serious illnesses.

“In three to five years, aging will be transformed,” said Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. “We are in the early stages of seeing what technology can do.” Nursing homes will become like the poorhouses of yore as technology makes living at home easier, she said.

And nowhere in the nation is the elderly population growing more than in the Carolinas. According to the census, the number of people over age 65 grew 28 percent between 2000 and 2010 – almost three times more than the national average.

The Internet of Things – a network of physical objects that are embedded with electronics, software, sensors and connectivity that enable objects to “talk” to each other – is also closer than most people think, said Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Older adults are still on the wrong side of the digital divide, according to various studies. But Coughlin said bad products were the culprit, not a dislike for new technologies. “If you make the gadgets fun, people will use them,” he said.

Baby boomers, he added, will be the new disrupters who adopt the technologies, because they expect to live better.

For now, most smart technology relies on small sensors that can be placed anywhere in the home to track activity. On the refrigerator, they note how often the door is opened. On the front door, they log someone’s comings and goings. Their purpose is to generate data that can be used to prevent illnesses or to reduce hospital trips.

Besides her safety watch, Dickow has Lively sensors throughout her home. A hub in her tea cart transmits the data, which appears on an online dashboard available to her daughter. But Dickow said she had forgotten that the devices were even there.

Anyone can add sensors to a home for only a few thousand dollars, people who work with older adults said.

Some communities for older adults are also tiptoeing into using sensors. Eskaton, which has about 30 campuses in Northern California, put sensors in some of its apartments. Information that is gathered is downloaded several times a day, said Sheri Peifer, chief strategy officer at Eskaton. Data is then analyzed by software and placed in a resident’s snapshot report that is generated every day.

“The system gets to know your personal behavior,” Peifer said. “We’re alerted if there’s no motion, for example.”

This story was originally published August 17, 2015 at 8:47 AM with the headline "Technology can make aging safer."