By Rick Banas of Gardant Management Solutions
Will those of us in the Baby Boomer generation be shopping at a Victoria’s No Secrets in the near future?
I mentioned this to a couple of colleagues from Gardant as we were listening to Andrew Carle deliver his keynote address at the Leading Age Illinois 2015 Annual Meeting.
Leading Age Illinois represents providers of housing and services to older adults, including senior living, assisted living, supportive living and memory care communities.
Andy is an award-winning professor and founder of the Senior Housing Administration program at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. The program is the first in the nation to offer curricula dedicated exclusively to the senior housing field.
At the Leading Age Illinois meeting, Andy was speaking on “Innovations, Technology and the Future of Senior Housing.”
He talked about Global Aging. It is his belief that “Global Aging” will affect us long before “Global Warming.”
He noted that U.S. Census data indicates that as of the year 1900 there were an estimated 3,536 individuals in the United States who were 100 years of age or older. As of 2050, the number is projected to be 834,000. Was it coincidence that I received an e-mail earlier in the day about being invited to a 100th Birthday Party?
Eighty percent of the care being delivered to seniors today, Andy said, is being provided by unpaid caregivers – family members or friends. One problem is distance. A significant percentage of family members live more than an hour away from each other. Often, travel times are much longer. Another challenge for family members is trying to balance work, caregiving and their own family obligations. And many of the family caregivers are 65+ or 75+, caring for parents who are in their eighties and nineties and beyond.
Long-term home health care, with caregivers spending so much of their time driving from house to house, is inefficient.
The two biggest strategic questions we face as an industry with the coming surge of aging Baby Boomers, Andy says, are “Who Will Take Care of Them” and “Where Will They Live.”
I would add a third based on reports we have seen over the past few years about how so many Baby Boomers are very ill-prepared for retirement. “How Will We Be Able to Provide the Care They Need at a Price They Can Afford?
One avenue will provide some help is “Nanna Technology”, Andy says. A number of years ago Andy coined the term “Nanna Technology” to described technology designed for older adults.
He talked about some “Nanna Technology” products that are being introduced to the market or are in the research and development stage:
Smart Shoes – which use sensors to help improve balance and reduce falls. Testing has shown that by wearing the shoes, 73-year-olds had the same balance as 23-year-olds.
Smart Soles – an insert that contains a GPS tracking device.
Digital Pills that contain sensors so that there is verification that the individual swallowed the pill. The sensors also can tract how the person reacts to the medication.
Robots that can lift an individual in and out of bed or a chair, which will reduce the likelihood of caregivers injuring themselves.
Shirts that can administrator CPR while calling 911.
It was when Andy was talking about underwear with sensors that my remark to my colleagues came to mind.
Think of all the possibilities. Underwear that is able to monitor your blood pressure; heart beat; temperature; whether you are standing, sitting or lying down; asleep or awake; if you have fallen – all hooked to a tracking system that can send an alert if anything suddenly appears abnormal.
It had me thinking that Victoria’s No Secrets stores – in our favorite shopping malls and on-line – might become all the rage.
