Technology
How AgeTech Is Revolutionizing Senior Care
Technology designed to improve the lives of aging adults, otherwise known as AgeTech, is transforming senior care.
Whereas in the recent past it was typically family members, friends, and caregivers who were first to notice when seniors started experiencing health issues that warranted senior care, nowadays it’s often AgeTech devices such as mobile apps, heart rate monitors, and even robotic cats and dogs that first detect these issues.
AgeTech is not necessarily replacing human involvement in senior care. On the contrary, AgeTech automates senior care in order to free up caregivers and medical professionals to be as efficient as possible in providing it. In other words, at its best, AgeTech is not replacing human care for seniors, but rather improving it.
What is AgeTech?
AgeTech is any technology designed to improve the lives of aging adults and provide better senior care.
Senior care encompasses long-term care, senior housing, assisted living, home care, hospice care, and adult daycare. Typically, a senior who is in overall good health does not require senior care unless they are struggling to carry out activities of daily living (ADLs), like bathing or shopping, due to cognitive, emotional, or physical health problems.
However, seniors do not have to be experiencing any cognitive, emotional, or physical health problems to benefit from senior housing, nor do they have to be experiencing these health problems to benefit from AgeTech.
AgeTech does not only include technology that improves seniors’ health. It also includes any kind of technology that improves seniors’ quality of life.
Naturally, any innovative senior housing company now uses AgeTech to provide better care and services to its residents. So too does any innovative hospital.
What Does AgeTech Do?
Certain AgeTech will initiate conversation, for instance, and encourage seniors to exercise or contact loved ones. Robotic pets, another form of AgeTech, provide company and companionship.
AgeTech can offer seniors health services that caregivers, on their own, cannot. Cameras and smartwatches, among other AgeTech devices, can track seniors’ behavior to determine any regularities that indicate problems with their health. If an elderly person starts spending more time than usual on the living room couch, for instance, AgeTech can notice this change in their behavior—which may indicate decreased mobility or even depression—and alert caregivers.
AgeTech can also watch for falls and share footage of falls with paramedics, who then determine whether the fall warrants hospitalization.
AgeTech and Senior Care
One of the most exciting innovations in AgeTech are virtual reality devices that use machine learning to provide games and virtual therapy exercises to seniors who have suffered brain injuries, strokes, and spinal cord injuries, as well as to seniors who are experiencing neurodegenerative diseases.
AgeTech is rapidly advancing and, as baby boomers age, the market for AgeTech will continue to expand.
In other words, AgeTech is shaping the future of senior care.
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