Most of the current technology available is not designed with older aging adults in mind as the potential end user. Keren Etkin, author of The AgeTech Revolution and publisher of The Gerontechnologist blog, is working to change all that. And she’s hopeful. In fact, she envisions a world in which technology, in the not-too-distant future, will take into account older adults in the design process as well as solve some of the biggest challenges in aging, including housing, transportation, social isolation and loneliness.
“Developing technology to tackle the challenges of aging is the single most important opportunity of the next decade,” she wrote in her book. In a nearly one-hour interview, Etkin talked about the major themes in her book as well as her latest Annual AgeTech Market Map, which identifies technology firms providing products and services for older adults. Read: Call it virtual assisted living: Seniors can stay in their own homes longer thanks to these pandemic hacks Etkin, who has a master’s degree in gerontology, began her career in the “aging industry” in 2014 working in the nonprofit sector. Her work there was important and impactful. “We were making a real difference in people’s lives,” she said. Unfortunately, it wasn’t scalable. The nonprofit had limited financial and human resources. “We simply couldn’t reach everyone who needed our assistance,” she said. What’s more, she wasn’t able to focus on technology. That all changed, she wrote in her book, when she was recruited in 2016 to work for Intuition Robotics, the maker of social robot ElliQ. “I was incredibly excited because technology is scalable and we could mass produce as many robots as we wanted to, in theory, to help as many older adults as we needed to,” she said And ever since then, she’s focused exclusively on the intersection of aging and technology. Include older adults in the digital transformation According to Etkin, our society is going through an u …