GeriTech

In Search of Technology that Improves Geriatric Care

Case Study Part II: Joan’s Daughter’s View on Joan’s Health

In my upcoming ebook about better digital health tools for aging adults, I share a case study — an older woman named Joan — and I write about her struggle to manage her health from three perspectives: Joan herself, her concerned daughter, and her busy primary care provider.

Joan has more chronic conditions than most seniors — eight diagnoses, plus she’s had falls recently — but they are a fairly common combination in people who smoked and were overweight in middle age.

In this post, I share part II of the case study: the perspective of Joan’s daughter Susie, who is understandably worried about her mother’s health and wellbeing. (See Part I of the case study for Joan’s perspective, plus a list of her conditions and medications.)

As you read this, consider the following:

  • Do you know many people worried about the health of their older parents?
  • What kinds of technologies, tools, and services have you come across that might help Susie and Joan?

Joan’s Health Story (According to Her Family Caregiver)

Worried family caregiverSusie is worried about her mother almost all the time. [Read more…] about Case Study Part II: Joan’s Daughter’s View on Joan’s Health

Case Study: The Story of Joan & Her Health

Did you know: in 2010, 46% of fee-for-service Medicare spending went to those 14% of beneficiaries who had six or more chronic conditions. (See Fig 3.2 of the 2012 Medicare Chronic Conditions Chartbook.)

You might think those are unusually sick seniors. But when I practiced primary care internal medicine, I saw people with 6+ conditions all the time. As you can imagine, they tend to see doctors a lot. (That data is in Figure 2.4 of the chartbook.)

It’s actually not that hard to end up with several chronic conditions by age 65: a history of smoking and being overweight in middle age will easily bring on 6+ chronic conditions later in life. And many of those seniors don’t look that sick or disabled.

But they struggle with their symptoms, and they especially can struggle with an overwhelming amount of “self-healthcare” to manage.

If there’s anyone who would benefit from digital health technology, it’s them. They need help with their health. Their primary care providers need help helping them. Their adult children are worrying. Oh and, we want to help them in order to minimize ED visits and hospitalizations, which are distressing for seniors and expensive for all of us.

Unfortunately, over the past three years I’ve found very little that seems usable and useful for these seniors with multiple chronic conditions.

So as part of my upcoming ebook about better digital health for seniors, I’ve written a little story. It illustrates the situation of Joan, an older woman struggling with multiple conditions. I’ve even included her medication list.

As you read this, consider the following:

  • If you’ve developed or are using a digital health app or service: do you think it will work for Joan?
  • More importantly: what do you think would be most beneficial to Joan right now, to help her with her health?

Joan’s Health Story (According to Joan)

Joan, aged 79, is more than a little tired of dealing with her health.

She didn’t always have health problems. She had a career and raised her kids and earned a good pension that supports her now that she’s retired. She lost her husband to a heart attack years ago, but she’d be doing fine on her own if she didn’t have to keep going to the doctor all the time.Maybe she hadn’t taken the best care of herself, but who knew the difference? Everyone smoked. And she quit five years ago anyway. She’s maybe a little overweight, all right, but you try having three kids and see if you stay slim.

She puts on a brave face but she feels a crippling guilt sometimes for not looking after her health. Maybe it’s her fault that she has hypertension now, and high cholesterol. She knows her diabetes and the osteoarthritis in her knees can probably be traced back to her weight, and her doctor’s told her that smoking caused the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and maybe the atrial fibrillation too.

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How the White House & Others are “Gauging Aging”

If you were to host a conference on aging, what would you put on the agenda?

And how would you talk about it?

I found myself mulling this over as I watched the first part of the White House Conference on Aging (WHCOA), which took place on July 13th.

What’s your frame on aging? Start with the Gauging Aging report

It’s especially interesting to consider the WHCOA in light of the recently published “Gauging Aging” report by the Frameworks Institute.

“Gauging Aging,” simply put, is a report about the differences in how aging experts and the public think about aging. It’s based on an in-depth analysis of how experts talk about aging and supporting an aging society, compared to how the public views the issues and the potential solutions.

By understanding the differences, experts can then get better as using communications that brings us to a shared understanding of the problems to be addressed,  in order to effect changes that are meaningful and beneficial. After all, narratives and ideas are important in framing how people perceive problems, and their options for addressing them.

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Fascinating Facts on Family Caregivers: Highlights from Caregiving in the US 2015

If you follow aging and caregiving, then you’ve probably already heard about the major new caregiving report that was released last month: “Caregiving in the US 2015,”a joint effort from the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP. The study was funded by AARP, Archstone Foundation, Eli Lilly, Home Instead Senior Care, MetLife Foundation, Pfizer, UnitedHealthcare, and the Family Support Research and Training Center in conjunction with the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Strangely, this report seems to have been hardly covered by the major newspapers. I say this is strange because the findings are incredibly important and should be part of the national discourse, instead of only being covered by aging and caregiving wonks.

After all, everyone knows someone who’s struggling to help an aging spouse or parent. This nationally representative survey found that 18% of respondents were caregivers. Of those, most (79%) were helping an older person, as you can from this excerpt of the executive summary:

prevalence-of-caregiving-2015
Caregiving prevalence & basics, from page 9 of the executive summary

The report also later notes that nearly half of caregivers provide care to someone age 75 years or older.

For this survey, caregiving for an adult was defined as providing “unpaid care to a relative or friend 18 years or older to help them take care of themselves.” (For child care recipients, the survey sought to identify people providing care due to “medical, behavioral, or other condition or disability.”)

Highlights from the executive summary

If you are involved in aging, caregiving, or even healthcare, I would strongly encourage you to review the report’s executive summary. It is chock full of fascinating data, which I’ll summarize below.You should also consider signing up for the related webinar, which will be on July 15th from 2-3p EST. Sign up here.

Older caregivers have a high care burden. The survey found that nearly 1 in 10 caregivers is aged 75 or older. They noted that such older caregivers — most of whom care for a spouse — tend to put in a lot of hours (34/wk on average), often are not enlisting paid help, and often have been providing care already for 5.6 years. This group reported being very involved in communicating with health professionals, and said they want more information about making end-of-life decisions.

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GeriTech’s Take on AARP’s 4th Health Innovation @50+ LivePitch

On Thursday May 14, 2015, AARP hosted its fourth Health Innovation@50+ LivePitch event, an event that “features the most exciting start-up companies in the “50 and over” health technology sector.”

In this post, I’ll list brief descriptions of the finalists, comment on how promising they seem to me — in terms of improving the healthcare of older adults — and tell you which products I’m most interested in. To see what I’ve thought of past LivePitch finalists, here’s my coverage of the first, second, and third cohorts. (Now what would be interesting is to see what’s happened to all those companies since, esp the winners. No time now to do it, but let me know in the comments if you have an update re a past LivePitch finalist.)

As usual, the start-ups were judged by venture capitalists and by a consumer audience. No judging or input from anyone whose primary work and expertise is to improve the health of people aged 50+.

See the FAQs for the eligibility criteria for this year. More interesting to me are the judging criteria and AARP’s categories (also listed in FAQs):

“The Judges will focus on these five critical elements:

  • Functionality – Is the company’s product easy to use, and does it get the job done?
  • Potential – What is the company’s business model and likely profitability, size of the market, likelihood of adoption, and growth potential?
  • Team / People – What experience does the team have, and can they make the product or service a success?
  • Creativity/Differentiation – Why would someone use this product and/or service over alternatives?
  • Scalability – Is this a small business not capable of scaling or is it a large business that has a lot of growth potential?

The AARP Consumer voting will focus on these four critical elements:

  • Need – Why should consumers want this product? Does the product/service address a significant unmet or under-met need? Is it unique?
  • Marketing – How easy is it to get the product?
  • Usage – Why is the product easy to use?
  • Value – Why does the value and cost of the product makes it a “must have”? What is the value proposition? Would someone use it and/or refer it to family and friends?”

AARP’s Categories for Health Innovation @50+:

  • Medication Management
  • Aging with Vitality, e.g. increase daytime energy, maintain muscle strength, manage arthritis, improve or aid in memory/cognition, brain fitness improve/aid hearing, improve/aid vision
  • Vital Sign Monitoring
  • Care Navigation
  • Emergency Detection & Response
  • Physical Fitness
  • Social Engagement
  • Diet & Nutrition
  • Behavioral & Emotional Health
  • Other
Compared to last year’s categories, AARP seems to have dropped the category of “aging in place.” They still don’t have a category about managing one’s chronic health problems, which I would argue is extremely important to maintaining the health and wellbeing of people aged 50+.

AARP’s list of this event’s ten national finalists is here. They also had an additional group of five Florida finalists, which I won’t have time to cover.

GeriTech’s quick take on the AARP LivePitch finalists

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