Dear Subscriber
Thank you for your interest in Tech-enhanced Life and the Longevity Explorers. This is our monthly update Newsletter, summarizing the latest content published on the Tech-enhanced Life website. If you like our work, please forward this to someone you think would like it too.
What’s New?
This month, we explore an idea for how to broaden the number of people who can benefit from the sorts of smarthome features many Longevity Explorers have reported as being extremely valuable to them.
“Smarthome Features as a Service” for Older Adults
Longevity Explorers have reported on how they have used different smarthome features to improve the quality of life of people with vision impairments, people with hearing difficulties, people with limited mobility, and people facing early cognition impairment — as well as people who just find these new capabilities “fun” and “useful”, and people who want richer interactions with other people and the world around them.
However, at present there is a “barrier” to widespread adoption of smarthome features that can benefit older adults — the fact that most of the interesting applications require an element of Do-it-Yourself (“DIY”) capability.
We believe there is a big opportunity to broaden the deployment of these empowering smarthome features to others — by using a “smarthome features as a service” model.
This Article explains our thinking, and describes a pilot project we are considering in partnership with one of the Villages in Northern California.
NOTE: There are opportunities to get involved. Read the article and scroll to the bottom of it to see how to express interest!
[Fun fact: the image above was generated by AI. :)]
Topic Deep-Dives
Reminder: There is lots of material on the Tech-enhanced Life website.
A good way to explore the site is to visit one of the "Topic Hubs" below. From there, you can find the research we have done relating to that "Topic".
The “Smarthome Hub” is especially relevant to this month’s article.
See below.
Falling: How to Avoid
Our team of clinicians and citizen analysts has scoured the web for the best available answers to a set of questions designed to help you make falling less likely, and make the consequences if you do fall less bad.
Click here to read "Falling: How to Avoid" on Tech-enhanced Life
Tools to Live Independently Longer
One of the biggest concerns as we grow older is remaining relatively independent, and avoiding reliance on the “kindness of strangers”. Luckily, an emerging crop of products and services have the potential to help with that. This Topic Hub is the place to start to see our research on the topic of staying independent for ...
Click here to read "Tools to Live Independently Longer" on Tech-enhanced Life
Hearing
This is the topic hub where we collect the results of our explorations and research relating to hearing. The theme is seeking tools and gadgets that can postpone the time at which hearing issues get in the way of living life. As we grow older, hearing often deteriorates. If left unaddressed, hearing issues can ...
Click here to read "Hearing" on Tech-enhanced Life
Brain, Memory, Dementia Technology
We are exploring ways to optimize brain fitness and memory — looking for ideas about how to push cognitive impairment as far into the future as we can. And we are exploring dementia technology — looking for gadgets that can help older adults function independently as long as possible. We think the right gadgets and ...
Click here to read "Brain, Memory, Dementia Technology" on Tech-enhanced Life
Technology: Using It, Choosing It, Finding Support
A big focus of Tech-enhanced Life’s work is finding ways technology-based products can improve the quality of life for all of as we age. But often, for those products to be useful, older adults need to make some changes to their way of life and learn new things. Sometimes, people need some help and ...
Click here to read "Technology: Using It, Choosing It, Finding Support" on Tech-enhanced Life
Transportation & Mobility Tech
Being free to get from one place to another when you want is a very important ingredient of an independent life. But it becomes harder as you get older — and either can’t (or don’t want to) drive anymore, or can’t walk as far as you used to. We are exploring solutions to these challenges. This ...
Click here to read "Transportation & Mobility Tech" on Tech-enhanced Life
Planning, Documentation, Expert Help
Most older adults we talk to would like to “stay independent” for as long as possible. And when we probe what that really means, it usually is about maintaining some level of autonomy and control over one’s destiny as long as possible. Whether it’s how we are cared for after a medical emergency, ...
Click here to read "Planning, Documentation, Expert Help" on Tech-enhanced Life
Smart Home, Artificial Intelligence, Robots
We think artificial intelligence, smart home technologies, and robots have the potential to enable older adults to live independently for longer, and have better quality of life than they would without these gadgets. We are evaluating products as they come to market, and sharing what we learn about which products are best for ...
Click here to read "Smart Home, Artificial Intelligence, Robots" on Tech-enhanced Life
Clothing and Older Adults
Who wants to wear “old people clothes“? This is a common sentiment among the older adults who come to our Longevity Explorer meetings or read this website, especially when the discussion turns to clothes that fall into the category of “adaptive clothing“. On the other hand, there are many situations where clothing designed for ...
Click here to read "Clothing and Older Adults" on Tech-enhanced Life
Social Isolation and Loneliness
Social Isolation and Loneliness have attracted lots of media attention recently due to the large negative impact that being lonely and lacking human interactions can have on quality of life. And this is seen as being especially problematic for older adults, although it is also prevalent among younger demographics. As an illustration of this ...
Click here to read "Social Isolation and Loneliness" on Tech-enhanced Life
Vision
This is the topic hub where we collect the results of our explorations and research relating to vision. The theme is seeking tools and gadgets that can postpone the time at which vision issues get in the way of living life. As we grow older, vision deteriorates. It starts with needing reading glasses (presbyopia) ...
Click here to read "Vision" on Tech-enhanced Life
Everyday Objects that Improve Life
Improving the design of everyday objects like jar openers, nail clippers, and other household appliances and gadgets can greatly improve the quality of life of older adults as they develop conditions like arthritis, tremors, or other physical and mental limitations that come with age. Together with our Longevity Explorers, we are evaluating products in this “everyday object” ...
Click here to read "Everyday Objects that Improve Life" on Tech-enhanced Life
Technology and Aging
Our thesis is that clever new products, with technology embedded into them, can push out the time at which functional decline gets in the way of living life as we wish. We founded Tech-enhanced Life to explore the intersection of aging and technology. Together with the Longevity Explorers, we are seeking out technology enabled products ...
Click here to read "Technology and Aging" on Tech-enhanced Life
Brainstorming, Unmet Needs, Ideation
On occasion, when we come across a “problem relating to aging that we wish someone would solve”, our Longevity Explorers spend some time brainstorming possible solutions and fleshing out the details of the unmet need. We have collected some of these brainstorming sessions here in one place, so that innovators looking for good ideas to ...
Click here to read "Brainstorming, Unmet Needs, Ideation" on Tech-enhanced Life
Homebrew Solutions, Workarounds, & Ideas
Reports from older adults, and their friends and families, about ways they have solved challenges that were getting in the way of living life the way they wanted. These pieces of content contain real life experiences from makers, inventors, hackers of aging, and regular people dealing with growing older.
Click here to read "Homebrew Solutions, Workarounds, & Ideas" on Tech-enhanced Life
Designing for Older Adults: Learnings
There is a prevailing thought that products for older adults need to be designed with “different” things in mind than products for other demographics. But what should those “different” principles be? And is this idea even correct? We are exploring these ideas in a series of explorations and articles. Our goal is to shed light on what ...
Click here to read "Designing for Older Adults: Learnings" on Tech-enhanced Life
Retirement & Senior Living Choices: A Guide
Whether you call it senior living, retirement living, aging in place, or just finding a nice place to live when you get a bit older, where and how to live is a super important question for older adults. There is a great deal of information on the Internet about the more traditional types of retirement …
Click here to read "Retirement & Senior Living Choices: A Guide"on Tech-enhanced Life
Medication Management Guide: Tools & Strategies
This is the home page for our research into medication management tools, including pill reminder apps, other types of pill reminders and pill organizers, complex medication management systems, and related topics such as maintaining a correct medication list. We have initiated this project, because imperfect medication adherence is one of the leading causes of premature ...
Click here to read "Medication Management Guide: Tools & Strategies" on Tech-enhanced Life
Useful Apps: Older Adults, Seniors & Boomers
This is the homepage for Tech-enhanced Life’s Curated Collection of Useful Apps for Older Adults, Seniors & Boomers. We believe that smartphone Apps have huge potential to improve the quality of life of older adults. But most Apps are developed for 20 year olds, and are not necessarily ideal for older adults. We have a research ...
Click here to read "Useful Apps: Older Adults, Seniors & Boomers"on Tech-enhanced Life
Medical Alert Systems: Selection Guide
Welcome to the Tech-enhanced Life guide to medical alert systems & services for older adults. (These products are also known as personal emergency response systems, or PERS.) This guide is designed to help you answer the question: “Which medical alert system is right for me?” If you are looking for independent, objective evaluations …
Click here to read "Medical Alert Systems: Selection Guide" on Tech-enhanced Life
Support Us with Time, Ideas, or Funding
If you like what we do, and would like to see it continue, please consider contributing time, ideas, or some funding to help support our work.
We get a lot of compliments on the depth and objectivity of our research coverage (of things like medical alerts). And we are excited to see the Longevity Explorer community expand, and enable increasing numbers of older adults to explore the future of aging and the intersection of aging and technology.
These initiatives need your support to continue. Please consider contributing some of your time, ideas, or some funding to help support our work.
Get Involved
Become a Longevity Explorer
Learn more about becoming a Longevity Explorer, and sign up if you would like to be invited to take part in some of our explorations.
Share Your Insights with Older Adults Around the World
Think you might like to publish something on Tech-enhanced Life, or collaborate with us on some interesting explorations of relevance to older adults and their families?