It’s no secret by now that the tech industry is making big waves within the senior care sector. And why wouldn’t it? Current estimates say that by the year 2050 about a fifth of the U.S. population will be aged 65 or older. That’s a lot of people with advanced needs that technology might be able to help out with.
It also happens to be a lot of money. Even if motivation to enter the marketplace and create senior-friendly products is not entirely altruistic, there is still the motivation to create a profit. This can lead to high quality products when developed in the right setting.
The internet of things looks like it has the most to still offer the care community, simply because its potential is still be unlocked. About 90 percent of homes already have internet connected devices present, like a smart TV or a personal assistant like Amazon Echo offers. As artificial intelligence advances, these kinds of devices can help boost safety, alert authorities if something happens, or even provide prompts to help seniors stay safe and happy. These technologies currently take the form of rugs that can detect falls, medication alerts, and leak detection systems. We’re just starting to understand how much this tech can do for our loved ones.
Even the greatest technology cannot replace the need for human contact. Having a person present and active in the care of an elderly loved one is important because it provides something that technology never will–loving attention. Although tech items–including some of the things listed here–can help improve supervision, safety, and communication, technology cannot give personalized attention in a loving manner. It can help, but it can’t do everything.
That’s why it’s so important to enlist the help of a care service that you know and trust. And that’s why we ensure that each one of the caregivers that we hire has a clean background, has the skills that are necessary to provide a high level of care, and that they are trained on an ongoing basis so that those skills stay sharp. We do our best to match a caregiver to the person that they will be helping so that their personality and skillset will be ideal for working together. We have found that it is a much more effective approach than implementing a cookie cutter style of care. It focuses on the person in need, and not a business model.
In addition to advances in technology, senior care is benefitting in another way from new tech trends. The job market for those interested in helping the elderly is expanding in a way that wasn’t originally foreseen. Besides service jobs like aides, caregivers, technicians, and nurses, there are also senior care jobs opening up in the Internet/Technology sector. It’s one of the surprises that we’ve seen while looking at the senior job market, and it’s definitely a good thing for the overall community. It brings different talent sets into the care sector, and more benefits are available to the people that we serve as a result.
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