When young (or younger) people think of aging technology, they may primarily envision clinical solutions – telemedicine platforms, for example. However, getting older has more than just a physical component. Isolation, for example, is a serious problem for the elderly, especially during the pandemic. Older people also still have to manage their everyday lives and their finances, not just planning estates and wills.
AARP Innovation Labs, the incubator program, sheds light on the many facets of aging in his virtual presentation at CES with a list of startups divided into five groups: community, clinic, wellness, financial services, and housing.
The program included fintech startups due to the economic impact of the pandemic and focused on three companies that “help the aging population better manage finances and budgets and plan effectively for the future”. Originally developed to provide children and young people with financial education, scorer extends reach to more people with savings and investment management tools. Genivity makes bespoke financial projections based on users’ health and lifestyle habits, health status, and retirement goals, showing them how many years they might have to work before and when they might retire need advanced care. Trust & Will, Meanwhile, makes it easy for families to create guardianship plans, wills, and trusts.
Isolation was a serious problem for older adults even before COVID-19, and the pandemic has made loneliness worse. AARP Innovation addresses this problem with its selection of “community” startups. While many people already rely on other video chat apps, movie theater wants to tailor the experience to families with elderly relatives living away from them. It IoT toy for children that they can use to play games and carry out projects with their grandparents and other family members via the Kinoo app.
A tabletop console game system, Game board, also allows family members to have fun together instead of just chatting. It is home to hundreds of games including role-playing games. Beeyonder is a marketplace for live, expert-led virtual tours around the world and can help alleviate the boredom of staying home while the pandemic continues.
Many of the startups at AARP’s incubator are focused on aging on the spot or helping older people stay at home rather than moving to a care facility. The “Living” area comprised three companies that focused on individual mobility. Camino robotics develops “e-rollators” or smart walkers with functions that help people negotiate slopes and unevenness, automatically brake when driving downhill and can be folded into “compact mode” to navigate tight spaces. Brazing mobility says it can turn any wheelchair into a smart wheelchair with patent-pending blind-spot sensors that warn of obstacles using light, noise and vibrations. De Oro now has Devices NexStride, designed for people with Parkinson’s disease, is a small device that attaches to canes and crutches and uses audio and visual cues to help users overcome icy episodes and take longer walks.
In the meantime, Earth is a startup that helps people with small wall-mounted sensors to live independently that can track biometric data such as heart rate, breathing, sleep and falls from up to five meters away and send warnings to caregivers and family members via an app.
In its wellness category, AARP Innovation presented three startups that focus on general health and wellbeing. This included Zibrio, which is also part of AARPs CES lineup last year. Zibrio is a scale that not only measures weight, but also measures a person’s balance and risk of falling. The company says the Zibrio balance scale can predict if you’re at risk of falling within the next 12 months, and the app will then provide personalized care recommendations. While many people track their diet and training with apps like MyFitnessPal or Noom, Powerful health was specially developed for people over 50. It connects users with a health coach and offers nutrition and exercise plans for older adults.
Mental wellbeing is also incredibly important. Bypassing was created to help people with “geographic, economic and inclusive barriers” gain access to health, wellness and mindfulness functions by partnering with gyms and working with large organizations, including health systems, to provide their services for To make user accessible.
Of course, improving health care and the delivery of health services to older adults is extremely important, especially in the United States with its fragmented health system. Included in the “Clinic” section of AARP Innovation, Folia health is a “custom operating system” for health that allows patients to answer multiple-choice questions on a daily basis, which are then reviewed by their providers to create diagnostic and care plans. It can be used to manage multiple conditions and communicate with multiple health care providers. Telemedicine startup Tembo, on the other hand, works with elderly care communities that enable them to provide remote medical services to their residents or customers. emblem was created to simplify pharmaceutical studies by speeding up the evidence and regulatory review processes.
For individuals, the clinic area comprised two startups. MindMics are smart earbuds that analyze biometric data, including heart rate, and send it to an app. JoyLux specifically addresses menopause with a range of products including pelvic floor exercise equipment, lubricants, nutritional supplements and cooling pads.
