Age Tech Innovation Week: Frontline Views -1

AgeTech Innovation Week from AGE-WELL. Oct.4-8, 2021

It was a marathon event. If you chose to make the full run as I did, your mind would have been stretched to capacity. Five fast paced half-days of speakers, moderated panel discussions and an entrepreneur’s pitch competition, all on a virtual platform that formed a comprehensive overview of the present developments and future possibilities in AgeTech – technology-based solutions that support older adults and caregivers.

First it should be noted that there are numerous background aging and longevity narratives that drive opportunities for the abundance of nascent technologies that were chronicled in this event; and the extent of these multiple tech applications needs to be laid out in a way so that not only everyday people get the story and the value, but so too – social and health sector workers, consumer focused businesses, financial investors and even career advisors.

As one example of capturing some of these aging and longevity narratives, AGE-WELL outlines them in what they identify as their eight Challenge Areas, which include Health Care & Health Service Delivery, Mobility & Transportation and Financial Wellness & Employment. If you want a look back at the full program while the list is still available, click open AgeTech Innovation Week Event Schedule and you will see how individual sessions plug into these challenges.

None of the topic areas covered were news to me, however my insights were further advanced as a result of participating in the entire dialogue. Some of the sessions were specific, such as How Technology Can Help People Living with Dementia and AgeTech in the Northern and Rural Context but there were three wide topic panel conversations that stirred response from myself and other participants in the chat and Q&A.

One of the take away messages about AgeTech, that more than once threaded these panel conversations, for me at least, is that if the public at large is going to gain any interest that a growing AgeTech market even exists and then, quickly grasp what it is, and how and why it matters to everybody through their life course – the language of AgeTech needs clarity, if not a rewrite of the language that defines it. To this point comments kicked off in very first session.

During the discourse on the pandemic’s long-term impact on AgeTech, moderated by Joseph Coughlin, Director of MIT AgeLab and author of The Longevity Economy (2017), if notes I took serve me well, Hannah Marston, Research Fellow at the Open University, UK said, and I paraphrase here:

AgeTech is a multi-stakeholder sector beyond researchers and developers and must move across professions, and …is AgeTech the right phrase to use?

In the chat, this triggered some thought that maybe it could be called Longevity Tech or Life Course Tech. Marston went on to make the case around creating greater awareness of (whatever we call it – AgeTech for now), it should be included more in school curriculum early on and move perceptions of beyond the notion that AgeTech is about wearable technologies.

Marston also pointed out that the original 2007 WHO Age Friendly Framework did not include technology. This deserves revisiting another day, but it causes me to add to my research file – how has any element of AgeTech been incorporated into subsequent WHO reports and in the Global Age Friendly Network of active community project work? More on AgeTech Innovation Week in part 2 next on my Oct. 26, 2021 post.