AsianScientist (Oct. 26, 2015) – Earlier this year, the buzz around wearable technology reached fever pitch with the release of the Apple Watch, a high-tech smart watch that includes fitness and health tracking sensors, with prices starting from US$549.
To date, wearable technology has been focused mainly on gadgets like the Apple Watch or the Fitbit: smart watches and activity trackers marketed to middle-class professionals looking to improve their own, usually already good health.
But some argue that there is a massive gap in the market and that faddish wearables such as these are failing to meet the needs of those who require them most—the elderly.
A growing market
With a median age of 46.1 years, Japan has the oldest population in the world. Most of developed Asia, such as Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong, is not far behind. A fifth of Singapore’s population will be over 65 by 2020, while Taiwan will get there by 2025.
Meanwhile, developing Asia will also face demographic challenges in the coming decades. Thanks to
China’s one-child policy, a quarter of its population will be over 65 by 2050.
So the market for seniors’ wearables is certainly growing, and there is greater awareness of that in some quarters. Earlier this year, non-profit think tank Access Health International launched its Modern Aging Singapore program to identify and mentor entrepreneurs with business ideas for the elderly.
Access Health chairman William Haseltine noted in an interview with Asian Scientist Magazine that the market for eldercare is “probably the biggest new market that’s emerging globally, because it crosses all different kinds of sectors—housing, transportation, communications.”
Elderly-focused services and products might include eldercare facilities, medical and smart devices to increase quality of life, regenerative medicine, and even restructuring city life to meet seniors’ day-to-day needs, he said.
Fall sensors and health trackers
The simplest wearables for the elderly were first developed in the 1980s, with one such invention being the LifeCall medical alert service, an emergency-call button that transmitted to a home phone line. Today’s versions have larger ranges or work with mobile phones so wearers can leave their homes.
And it often seems like fall sensors are a dime a dozen, each smaller, cheaper, or more sensitive than the next. For instance, Hong Kong firm Simple Wearables has a wearable fall sensor that calls or sends a text message to emergency contacts. Other systems involve a whole living space kitted out with smart sensors. For example, a Singapore testbed this year in 12 public housing apartments equipped elderly residents’ homes with emergency call buttons and sensors that could detect unusual periods of inactivity.
Meanwhile, the Healthstats wrist monitor BPro, invented by Singapore doctor Ting Choon Meng, tracks patients’ blood pressure patterns round the clock, providing more information than the instantaneous measurements taken at a doctor’s office.
Even bowel movements are not spared. Triple W, a firm based in Tokyo and California, has the D Free sensor that reminds users when they have to go to the bathroom, when worn in a belt or special underwear. The sensor, which will be launched commercially in 2016, could spare patients with no bowel control the indignity of messes and give them time to find a bathroom.
The limits of technology
But services like emergency call buttons can come at a price, cautions Dr. C. P. Wong, founder of the Hong Kong health and technology nonprofit eHealth Consortium, who noted at a 2014 conference that only five percent of needy elderly subscribed to personal emergency response services. Other caveats include patients’ privacy and the possibility that such services and devices might reduce human interaction, he added.
A piece for the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society that reviewed research on in-situ monitoring technologies for aging, including wearables, found that “some may feel shame and view technology as an admission of dependence [while] others may feel pressured to adopt technology just to remain independent.” Really, is a sensor telling a caregiver that one needs to go to the bathroom any more private than having a caregiver clean up an accident?
It’s also vital to design with the elderly rather than making assumptions about their preferences and abilities, said Gretchen Addi, portfolio lead for aging work at international design consultancy IDEO, which has held design workshops on the theme in China, Singapore, and elsewhere. The firm engages older adults like 91-year-old designer Barbara Beskind as design consultants, Addi told Asian Scientist Magazine.
For instance, designers have previously found and that older people with impaired vision or less dexterity than younger users prefer large tablets to small fiddly smartphones, and that the cleverest technology is no substitute for human interaction and relationships.
If these challenges can be overcome, technologies and innovations developed in Asia could one day also be used to meet the needs of other aging nations around the world.
“It is time for all of us to shift our mindset around aging, to see it as an opportunity rather than a demise, and to view the aging population as a vibrant contributor to our economy rather than a drain,” Addi said.
This article was first published in the print version of Asian Scientist Magazine, October 2015.
———
Photo: Shutterstock.
To read more, subscribe to Asian Scientist Magazine in print and receive four issues of Asian Scientist Magazine delivered directly to your mailing address for 12 months, inclusive of taxes and postage.
