You can listen to it here:
http://kalw.org/post/interview-richard-caro-new-technology-aging-adults

Activity-tracking Home Sensor Systems are a new class of product designed to help keep your Aging Parents Safe when they are home alone. You can see more in my earlier post. You can get the eBook on Amazon here if you want. [ Amazon is doing a 2 day promotion in which the book is free on Jan 12/13th 2015]

There was some pretty interesting discussion at the end of the talk, and people seemed to find our approach of focusing on personas and using them to decide what products made sense to be interesting. Hope you like the video.

Read about the research project here.

Get the eBook on Amazon here.

Here is the Book description (from Amazon).

“Activity-tracking Home Sensor Systems” are new products designed to help seniors stay in their homes longer, and to help their family and friends worry about them less. If you worry about an elderly relative or friend who spends a lot of time home alone, and are concerned about what would happen if they fell, or if they left the stove on, or if they had an accident and you were not there to help, then these products are designed with you in mind.

When the authors (a scientist-turned entrepreneur, and a geriatric consultant) set out to find one of these systems for their own use, they discovered that information about these products is sorely lacking, except in the form of marketing material disseminated by the companies. And at first glance, a number of these systems look the same. So they set out to research the field. After quite a lot of digging, they found that there are significant differences between the products, and that the “best” product is very dependent on your exact life situation.

This independent report looks in-depth at the leading Activity-tracking Home Sensor Systems: how they work; Which ones work best; how are they the same / different; and, most importantly, how to match the best Activity-tracking Home Sensor System with your individual needs. Activity-tracking Home Sensor Systems represent a new and emerging product category that is rapidly changing. “The Home That Watches Over Your Parents” is the first and only independent, objective report about these products. This e-book provides an analysis of the entire product category, as well as of specific products, and comes with links to an online database of more detailed product features that will be updated as new products enter the market.

The authors, Richard Caro and Mary Hulme, are members of the Longevity Collective, a group of Citizen Observers, Evaluators & Makers — working together to improve the quality of life of people as they age. This report is an initiative of the Longevity Collective, and is published by Tech-enhanced Life, PBC, which is the organization that manages the Longevity Collective on behalf of its members. Tech-enhanced Life, PBC is a Public Benefit Corporation with a mission of improving the quality of life of the aging and their families.

Get the eBook on Amazon here.

It’s about the intersection of several megatrends:

• the rapid growth in the elderly in most countries over the coming decades;
• the sad fact that society is ignoring a large talented pool of individuals who are 65 and older and have lots to contribute but who are all too often excluded from the workforce;
• the rise of the crowd as a way to tackle societal challenges; and
• the striking lack of high tech solutions to the many challenges of aging.

Hope you find it interesting.

Co-creating the future of aging from Richard Caro on Vimeo.

I just wrote a brief post about this and linked to a presentation of the results of some surveys we did. You can see the whole post, and view the presentation here:

• Read more about what seniors worry about.

The main takeaway is just how rapidly the “get out of the building” approach leads to important insights by the entrepreneur. The second takeaway for me is that this cohort approach, including a lot of learning from peers, works extremely well.

Steve Blank has been writing a series of posts about the course. Here is the latest post.

I recommend the whole series.

My favorite question when I meet someone with an idea for a new venture is: “what problem are we trying to solve?“

Recently, I have been meeting quite a few new ventures in the “aging” space, and when I ask this question, I get a broad range of answers, many of which don’t quite resonate with me.

I am convinced there are some very important “problems” that relate to the last decade or two of life, though. And some of them might well be solvable with judicious applications of technology.

For example, here is one problem statement which gets me excited. What if we can push out the time at which we start to experience functional decline, or slow it down?

Minimize / compensate for functional decline

For most of us, with age comes a gradual decline in our functional ability. We start having trouble with the instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs: (1)), and the activities of daily living (ADLs: (2)). And perhaps we experience some loss of cognition.

And as these declines happen, the quality of life goes down rapidly. And we need help. And maybe we need to move out of our house so we can get taken care of by others.

Ignoring for the moment the idea that technology might help us live longer, what if technology could enable us to function at a higher level in our later years than we would otherwise do, thus improving quality of life, postponing the need for more acute care, and likely saving the economy the high costs of caring for us in settings like long term care?

That seems like a goal worth devoting some time and energy too, and smells like a great business concept. Now we just need to find or create products and technologies that can enable this vision of a tech-enhanced life.

Do you have any specific ideas that fit this overall problem statement? If so, please comment below or contact me.

ADLs and IADLs defined

1. IADLs: activities related to independent living, such as preparing meals, managing money, shopping for groceries and personal items, performing housework, and using the telephone.

2. ADLs: activities related to personal care such as bathing, getting in and out of bed, walking, using the toilet, and eating.

Related articles

• Technology and Adults 50+: Assistive Technology (boundlessnews.wordpress.com)
• Robot Nurses? Healthcare Providers Welcome Robotic Assistance – But Not For Everything (medicaldaily.com)

The demographics are typically framed as “a challenge”. I have decided it is more useful to frame the upcoming “gray tsunami” as an opportunity.

Aging: Is the glass half empty or half full?

Challenge: Large and growing population of elderly people. Fewer young people to take care of them. Less and less spare money in the wealthy world economies to pay for aging services. Predictions of shortages of doctors, nurses, and caregivers.

Opportunity: Affluent baby boomers want it all, and have lots of assets. With powerful computers in everyone’s pockets (smart phones and tablets), low cost, pervasive networking and communication, and rapid advances in fields like robotics, there should be huge opportunities for technology to do what people cannot or will not do anymore, and transform the lives of these young-at-heart boomers.

Thoughts?

1. The campaign reached its goal of $100K in 2 hours.
2. It’s up to $240K as I write this and day 1 is not ended.
3. 1200+ people already pre-bought the product as a result of this campaign, thus doing a great job of validating that (some) people will buy it. Frankly, this is probably more important than the capital.

BUT, …. this is by no means a “typical” crowd funding result. What are the lessons?

Hallmarks of a good crowd funding campaign

I would guess there was a LOT of hard work behind the scenes to make this happen. But apart from good execution of the campaign, here are some hallmarks that seem to me important.

Extensive pre-publicity

I long ago lost count of how many times I heard about Scanadu. I have a personal interest in the field, and went to the effort to reach out and visit the company a year or so ago. But even for those less directly connected, there has been extensive mainstream press coverage:

Large cohort of interested potential buyers who know about the concept

From the extensive media coverage and the associated Tricorder X prize publicity, and the buzz among the Silicon Valley crowd, the universe of pre sold converts was already large long before the crowd funding campaign went live. The job of the Indiegogo campaign was to convert the converted as a first step.

Presumably, from here the buzz from the campaign over the next 30 days will expand the audience to those who had not already heard about it. But I predict the initial momentum will be key to the success of the next phase.

Sexy concept, Slick presentation

The Tricorder concept captures the imagination. That is why there are 300+ teams working on the Tricorder X prize around the world. But Scanadu has brought a definite touch of Hollywood to the packaging of their ideas and their company.

Invention risk ignored

It’s interesting to reflect that nowhere does one see any mention of invention risk. It seems to be just assumed that this product will “work as advertised”. Obviously, that is always a risk for this type of crowd funding campaign, and I see no problem with that. Basically, one is handing over a bit of money with the knowledge that there is some risk the product may not appear on time or with the desired performance.

But this is a very very different approach to the old days in which one first focused long and hard on proving the technical performance of the product, and only after “it worked” did one bring it to market.

In a way, this is the ultimate example of lean methodology applied to science based products. Because in fact I think there is quite a bit of invention risk in this product. And if it really delivers the performance the company hopes it will be quite a tour de force of technology development.

What we see with the Indiegogo campaign is really customer development at its finest. The MVP* is just a video in this case. And the campaign is testing whether people want this particular MVP.

The answer seems to be a clear “YES”. Let’s hope the company can now turn the MVP into something real that we can all use.

*MVP = “Minimum Viable Product”

Related articles

• Scanadu asks Indiegogo users to test its “tricorder,” but don’t call it a pre-order (pandodaily.com)
• Here’s a look at Scanadu’s Tricorder, which has raked in $100K in just a few hours on indiegogo (medcitynews.com)
• Scanadu finalizes Scout tricorder design, wants user feedback to help it get FDA approval (engadget.com)
• Scanadu Updates Its Tricorder, Gets One Step Closer to Reality (gizmodo.co.uk)

• Look for examples of things that already “work”, either in the USA or abroad; and
• copy them?

In a post yesterday that got me thinking, John Goodman makes the point that:

• there are real examples out there of individuals who have found ways to dramatically change the cost/quality ratio of healthcare (he gives interesting examples); but that
• we are not doing a good job of systematically looking for such examples and then trying to replicate and scale them.

It is well worth reading the full article.

While depressing, it makes you realize there are probably some exciting opportunities out there that are not being exploited as yet.