A New Breed of Tech for the Aging

(page 2 of 2)

Currently, the glasses must be manually switched to alter focus, but within the next five years, the researchers say an auto-focus lens using similar technology will be possible. A company called Pixel Optics in Roanoke, Va., is developing the lenses for consumer use.

Intel (INTC) has gotten the message that as baby boomers age, there will be a widening market for commercial solutions to health care. Their Proactive Health Research unit is developing a number of technological tools which will help the "sandwich generation" care for their aging parents as they enter old age themselves.

Unobtrusive Inventions

The group's manager, Eric Dishman, says Intel is focused on removing the stigma from technology products designed to help the elderly. "Assistive technologies have always made you feel old and sick. They didn't look like cool electronics, they looked like medical equipment," he says. "[Future] systems will be cool and hip, and they won't broadcast to the world 'I'm sick.'"

The Presence Lamp is a simple, unobtrusive way for boomers to monitor their parent's well being. Motion sensors in their home and their parent's home send an alert to the corresponding lamp, which lights up as each party returns home. Further along in its development, the lamp will relay more specific information about location within the home by lighting different colors.

"The Presence Lamp is really cheap and trivial [in terms of technology], but for the people in our study, it was magical," says Dishman. "They reported an increased quality of communication." Boomers in the study initially expressed concern that their parents would call them several times a day if they knew they were home, but the device functioned more as a means of reassurance than as an intercom.

Protecting Privacy

The biggest challenge for researchers in this field is to create products which provide seniors with assistance without compromising their independence or dignity. Sophisticated surveillance technologies which already exist can record movements throughout their home and report them back to their caretaker—but is that information they want to divulge? A debate has emerged.

"We need to always keep [privacy concerns] in mind, but there's also a great potential for technology to enhance independence and dignity," says Henry Kautz, a professor in the University of Rochester's computer-science dept.

"Today, one of the major factors that determines whether an elderly person enters a nursing home is incontinence," he points out. "Incontinence can be controlled by prompting the person to go to the bathroom at regular intervals. Technology that discretely provided such prompts would help many people extend the length of time they can continue to live in their own homes." Hopefully, it all adds up to better—and longer—living through assistive technology.

Click here to see a slide show of tech products for baby boomers.

Douglas MacMillan is a staff writer for BusinessWeek.com in New York.