Fancy seeing you here again. Not so fun fact, last weeks’ newsletter article about why parents lie to their adult children was the top clicked link. Guess there’s more than a few of you who still haven’t recovered from the whole “Santa Claus is real” ruse mom and dad tried to pull in your youth. 

This week, we dive into how parents plan on utilizing tech to stay out of your basement and in their homes. Stick around if an elderly roommate isn’t on this year's bingo card.

Last week, ~130K nerds and Nvidia fanboys (for the record, we think nerds are cool) converged in Las Vegas to discuss emerging technology trends. The annual technology convention, Consumer Electronics Show (CES), took over Sin City, highlighting the best and brightest in consumer innovation. A hot topic? AgeTech. The two primary consumer tech categories leading the AgeTech space? Smart home and digital health technologies.

What exactly is AgeTech? It’s a buzzy term used to describe technology that improves the lives of older people. Why does it matter? It’s projected to be a ~$200 billion market by the year 2030. For those of you still stuck in 2024, that’s less than 5 years from now. AgeTech is here, only getting bigger, and may help mom and dad maintain their independence a bit longer. 

Aging in place continues to be at the forefront of the AgeTech revolution and it was on full display at CES. The folks at MiiHealth developed Monica, a virtual health assistant designed to support personalized care delivery at home by way of wellbeing management, vital sign measurement, incident response, and more. The saucy little GenAI tool includes a dashboard that tracks and monitors the health and well-being of users, providing easily accessible data to those involved in the care of your loved one. Plus, the stylish cube will compliment the 8x10 senior picture of you dad still has displayed in his house. 

A leading cause of hospitalization in older adults is medication mismanagement. Omcare intends to change that by allowing families to help with the dispensing, management, and monitoring of loved ones living independently and taking multiple prescriptions. With the ability for 3-way communication, we’re stoked to see a feature that allows you, your mom, and her medical care provider to connect at the same time, all from the comfort of her home and your office. Think of it like one of those fancy soda machines but instead of a crispy Diet Coke, mom gets Prilosec and Zestril.💊

Like most tech, it’s not cheap and there’s a bit of a learning curve. We’re hopeful that costs decrease as product adoption increases. And before you try and tell us older adults aren’t tech savvy, peep grandma’s Facebook page, homegirl knows what she’s doing. She wants to like, share, post, and comment from the comfort of her own living room, even if it means she needs to get a robot for a roomie.

Well, we did.

On January 20th, President-elect Donald Trump will be inaugurated. With big names expected to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS), the ~68 million Americans who rely on these agencies' services can anticipate changes. Our fingers are crossed for meaningful improvements.🤞

🧠 The global Alzheimer’s drug market is expected to reach $12.3 billion by 2032. Don’t think we forgot to register for the Alzheimer’s Disease-Related Dementias Summit, we’ll be there.