I’ve just had a poorly thought out mild epiphany realizing what’s been staring me (and I’m sure everyone else) in the face: There is a huge burden of simple care tasks assisting people with transferring, mobility, dressing, showering, feeding, memory, medications etc.
Individually: The carer role is hard, physical, foul, violent, confronting, and worst of all 24/7.
Systemically: Half of the health system is clogged full of people admitted for social / care issues rather than medical issues. The population is aging and people are living longer with more severe deficits. There is a huge volume of exploited laborers keeping the system afloat.
It’s almost certainly a technical impossibility to solve a fraction of these problems and a large proportion of them likely need socially acceptable and safe human-robot interactions. However, a brilliant / affordable solution to getting grandpa out of bed or wiping his butt or engaging his mind could dramatically improve care timeliness, quality, safety, frequency, etc. and revolutionize parts of industries.
If you’re an entrepreneur looking for ripe territory consider literally any problem in aged / disability / nursing care.
TL;DR less hype / investment in self driving cars and AI that can solve esoteric BAR exams and more focus on helping grandpa safely stand and walk to the bathroom.
</rant>
I'm sure people said the same thing many times before. Agriculture is probably a good example of it, even if you ignore anything before modern times. Do you think after we developed tractors that we would have went on to make automated tractors that run by GPS and can plant, weed and harvest?
Technology can, and does, solve hard problems.
I don't wanna take care of my parents; I blame society.
I don't wanna have kids; I blame society.
We really can't keep letting society get away with all this.
Nah, we should build a society that can and does take care of its elderly.
My wife and I have a bunch of kids. We are also the only ones who will be meaningfully sorting out care for our parents. I am fortunate to be able to provide enough support to make it work. I also don’t feel confident that when we’re also responsible for caring for all four of our parents, there’s going to be enough of our time and energy to manage it along with my work, especially if there are more little ones or medical issues at that time. It’s important to be realistic.
And again, I’m an outlier. Most people have fewer resources to devote to it.
It's getting longer. Thanks for posting this.
The format of the URL is defined by the standard, so it can contain the EAN for the POS as well as additional data such as expiry date. Almost all 'barcode' scanners in use today can read QR codes so it just needs a software change on the POS.
I also like to visit thrift stores, and being practical, I snap photos of weird and wonderful items rather than buying them.
Here are some.
Anything to help low vision (and that’s a giant problem) One periodical I get has some white text on a bright yellow background. Solution: I wrote them. Waiting …
Finding things, whether in the home or at local stores (whose inventory varies, as in “Stuff comes and goes at Trader Joe’s”) or even online (which is tough for many people since online stuff is largely bogus scams bolstered by SEO) Home and food and medicine inventory (data to be private and not fed to sellers, thank you.)
Exoskeletons. This technology is already old. What’s the hang-up? Other mobility?
Backpacks that have gyroscopes built in to stabilize people.
Fall mitigation. TBD
Finding real help nearby, trusted people, not “pay to get referrals” right now, as in “I’m in a jam”. Includes tech advice. And spares to loan.
Filtering email and websites for scams and malware.
Any sane noncommercial alternative to “social media”. (That’s a larger issue but very important in my mind, which is free of them)
That opens the matter of getting important, pertinent, personal and timely news and situational awareness rather than noise. (See above)
Creating secure family communications to bust AI-generated phony ransom calls (and more)
Simple robotics, of the “bring your slippers and reading glasses” sort. Cellphone, too. Seems it’s always charging when I need it.
Oh, and since I’m in the foothills, places to go when there’s an evacuation, power is out, and cool places to hang out.
I think these address major unmet needs. I would hate to see them enshittified.
Other ideas will improve quality of life, but first things first.
I'm 75 and very in tune with needs!
It’s basically a no go market. Patients don’t have the funds themselves. Those that do simply hire a dedicated, private staff.
Children don’t want to pay for it since they view it as there parent’s expense.
Everyone views it as a cost that the healthcare system should cover - even though there isn’t money for it.
My optimism about tech used to be because I saw tech as solving humanities most pressing needs (even if it usually has unintended consequences like pollution, etc.) But now I see tech (most of the time, obviously I'm speaking in broad generalities) as not even bothering with pressing problems because you can make more money hijacking dopamine pathways to sell ads.
I mean, when I think of tech that would actually improve my life I think about things like a clothes-folding machine, not a program that writes mediocre poetry.
I think about this constantly, and it's a funny example because apparently the math involved for figuring out how to fold clothes is basically an unsolved problem. As I understand it the robotics -- also a very hard unsolved problem -- are the easy part, which should emphasize how horribly hard this problem is.
Several other things: 1) I recently saw a LinkedIn lunatic claim laundry was already automated, because laundry machines exist (way to out yourself as someone who never helps with laundry)
> mediocre poetry
2) I refuse to call language models "intelligence" until they can at least meaningfully contribute to the design of novel devices like the robots we are discussing. If it can't invent, it's not intelligent! Intelligent things are capable of novelty, not only regurgitating existing witnessed patterns.
Slightly weird take: bidets have this field fully covered and the only thing stopping them from being widely used (especially in this domain!) is user resistance to an unfamiliar solution to a very personal problem.
We don't need new tech for this, we just need a marketing breakthrough.
No, they don't. This "let them use a bidet!" stuff is an asinine response that is literally the equivalent of "let them eat cake."
Elderly people who need someone to wipe for them are usually either completely physically immobile where they're not exactly strolling to the toilet in any case, or they're wearing diapers, or they're so mentally declined they basically forget what they're supposed to do.
Plus, as the owner of a bidet who uses it every time I take a poop, you still need to wipe. What, you're going to just drip dry in your underwear - gross! My bidet even comes with a drying fan but it's in no way sufficient, you still need to wipe.
There's demand for trusted verified handling of regular financial life interactions, bill paying, hiccups from cards being changed and regular direct debits needing resetting, etc.
Much like, Chubb (for example) remote monitor home security with liability should one of their employees start feeding "they're not home and they have valuables" infomation to thieves.
My own father was born in 1935 and he's still pretty sharp, handles his accounts etc but he still worries (quite rightly) about social engineering and scammers .. the very "ease" of something doesn't reassure, it's the fact that interactions have been double checked by a trusted party (me, I guess) that does the trick.
It's also an area that demands reputation, liability, and transparent auditing - conservatorships for the elderly, as for Britney Spears, are ripe with opportunities for graft and abuse.
Found them here long ago (YC S13), used them with an alcoholic parent I was acting in a guardian capacity for.
I just spent an hour yesterday untangling my in-laws shared, paid, Spotify account.
What had transpired is that they needed to confirm FILs physical address. So they sent him a link to an old email address, but no notification in app. He, reasonably didn’t see it within the 1 week deadline. So they removed him from his own shared account. Once he was removed there was no way to confirm his address and self service to get himself back into his own paid service.
To get back on the account I had to find the very hidden “contact a real person” link buried very deep in useless help articles, and gated behind a bot that didn’t even get close to understanding the issue. Then, to verify identity he had us login via the app, not the website, create a playlist, make it private using a secondary menu and message him the name. Only then was he able to be added back onto the shared account. The shared account that he was paying for, mind you.
I have no idea how anyone who hasn’t seen the inside of a tech company is supposed to navigate these systems.
Somewhere in the years since we decided basic utility were unsightly.
Yes, there are probably a whole bunch of paid services which simply can't function if they have to actually provide useful, easy-to-access support to their paying customers. However, I'm not sure it's a net benefit to let them exist.
I taught a basic after school coding class, and the first thing I had to teach was the concept of a file, a folder, saving and loading.
These are things that everyone I went to school with understood in primary school.
Apps have abstracted it all away, and now kids just go for the search bar.
These kids grew up on the iphone or gsuite. They have little concept of a filesystem much less how the OS works. Its a black box. Teaching command line or writing scripts takes a lot of effort just to break out from their own wrong internal worldview of how a computer works. It’s kind of disappointing seeing what tech companies have done to dumbify this generation in terms of tech literacy.
I think its more about, stuff iterates today to your much more experienced and maybe open to adapting to new iterations faster. Or like my grandfather, he work with lots of new tech continuously over his 30-40 year career. So adapting to new tech is just second nature.
Tech literacy is a moving target.
I'm a professor in AI, I still wasted two days of my life disentangling a mess caused by a family member ending up with two amazon accounts attached to the same e-mail address.
[1] https://www.ordissimo.com/en/why-ordissimo
[3] https://www.endlessos.org/
[4] https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...
Ex got passwords altered. My credit union got ransomwared. For mysterious reasons the "bank by touchtone" worked so I could pay my credit card, but I can't get balances and access via web or app. The point being that problems are wildly varied and changing, let alone basic stuff that Apple and others change every so often. I know how to get answers by web search, but it's tricky, and impossible for others. Worse, fraudulent sites get top SEO rank, pose as authorized support and get you to drop RAC apps on your device. First question she had was "What is this remote app?" Like, delete immediately and restart the phone. Apple does not ask you to do that.
So, I think that personal attention is often needed. To the extent that AI can replace some of the tedious lookup, fine.
Another thing I have noted over time is that in helping people, I often run through lots of menu items and settings that people are unaware of (and sometimes I am not aware of) and the same function doable in two different places.
Of course, they want me to explain what I did, but since a lot was just looking for trouble and finding settings, it's 10x faster just to do it than explain it, especially since the solution is likely one-shot or useful once every 3 years. And then everything changes.
Well, I'll stop here for now. I love that this matter is getting a thread here.
This is a person who spent half of his life driving trucks...after he retired he took a class called "overcoming computer phobia" which began quite literally with "this is the power button, this is the mouse". He refuses to get GPS in the car and does not use the internet at all. No email, no social media.
These people are out there and as they age they only get more confused by things that they do not understand. Customer service is getting more and more difficult to get in touch with a real person (even more rare for the agent to be fluent and coherent in the necessary language, it is frustrating to not understand the topic and not able to comprehend spoken instructions at the same time). Not totally sure what the fix here is since automated systems and outsourcing service seem to be where everything is headed. In the case described above my father drove to the local office and was told he needed to call the number. The person in the office claimed they could do nothing...
My county is over 35% retired people. Cost of living is way above what caregivers can afford (just in the last 5 years or so). Most businesses have "now hiring" signs. I am not sure who is going to be taking care of these people since it seems to be a growing population...and those who would be able to take care of them are leaving the area.
So yeah...I agree with the OP. This field is going to grow in the next few years...but as others have said it may drop off a bit after the boomers.
But because of the nature of our healthcare and bureaucratic systems, we have a unique need for interventions in physical conditions - be it small-scale building modifications or assistive technologies. So, especially if you want to innovate making -stuff- I concur wholeheartedly.
That said - it looks like the comments until now on this are mostly looking at software-based assistive technologies. Which is ALSO a spot-freaking-on approach.
Please enlighten me though, I know almost nothing of this field.
As you can see, the percentages for each age group are close to each other, meaning it's more even.
Also, as you noted, half the picture are people whose problems are self-inflicted, mostly due to bad lifestyles. Right now, companies profit off bad lifestyles (first by selling them and them by helping to manage consequences). No comercial entity will profit from population keeping itself healthy and balanced, as mostly involves substraction (NOT doing some things) and not addition (doing/buying). It's a awareness and policy issue, and can only be fixed through either campaigns promoting good living, and through policies which enable it (more vacation time for workers, healthier food in stores, less stress due to economic pressures etc.).
Someone noticed rashes showing up on an elderly person and installed an in bathroom hidden camera. They were leaving them in the bathroom for hours and exiting/re-entering through the window.
For a fully mobile senior requiring no additional care, you're looking at a minimum of USD $3500/month at an assisted living facility. Add in any nursing needs, and that number will quickly go north of $5k/month. Once you start heading towards your late 80s, that number again quickly doubles.
Note that this does not include medical care, diapers, clothing, a phone, etc.
And this is the bottom of the market. A higher-end home will run double if not more.
In Japan, there are homes for every income tier, from "nothing more than a government pension" on up. Sure, the lower-end homes aren't great, but they beat homelessness by a wide margin. And these are private businesses, not government-run facilities.
When I was in graduate school for architecture fifteen years ago I saw a lecture by an architect I already respected greatly named Niall McLaughlin. He taught at the school (still does I think) so on four consecutive Wednesdays he gave these astounding two hour lectures. And he would take questions after until every question was answered. These events sometimes lasted 3 - 4 hours. The themes were "Architecture and ..." The two I remember without going back into my notes were "Architecture and Tools" and "Architecture and Memory."
This whole shaggy dog story is because "Architecture and Memory" started at the philosophical level but by the end tied in to his own work on memory care facilities. He's a famous architect. Has since won the Sterling Prize, the biggest prize awarded by RIBA. A. Big. Deal. And I don't even know if he publishes his memory care facilities.
But he got into that market - he shared with us - because he had a close family member who needed that care. Flash forward ten years and I'm spending time in a memory care facility with a very close family member. Thinking back to his experience, knowing how it felt. Realizing his personal empathy drove him to pursue a whole area of practice that most would never consider. I doubt he lost money doing these facilities but I can assure you he wasn't doing it for the high profit margins.
I'm absolutely not knocking your statement. The exact opposite sentiment is coming through I hope. If it's an area you're interested in exploring how to delve into and develop ideas within - find a reason to care. What I mean is - if you're interested in developing solutions in the area find a way to identify a real world problem worth solving in it. Volunteer a little at a nursing home or community center with senior programs, meet people facing the issues that come with aging.
Not to say you'd be doing it to be opportunist, but if you're looking for a "product market fit," start by observing the real and present every day challenges of the market. Use it to build the product story. I don't want to sound ghoulish in my biz-speak, but it's real - I think we all have personal experiences where knowing someone going through something gave us a reason to care about that issue in a broader sense.
Good luck - it's an area that is flush with problems worth solving, and I think could be rewarding to explore.
The main issues i can think of are;
1) Regulations - Govt. mandated laws on access to health records, personal liability etc.
2) Insurance - Can these services be charged under govt./private insurance schemes/claims?
3) Personnel Training - All employees must be trained in aspects of Nursing and People management, there must be on-call Doctors etc.
4) Wellness Centers - Places where the elderly can be brought in for regular companionship and prophylactic exercises.
5) Transport - A fleet of vehicles to transport the elderly to and from their homes.
6) Supplies - Medicines and everything else as needed.
There are three main models that i can think of;
a) The "standard" elder care homes which take care of everything for a fee.
b) A live-in nurse/maid/caretaker employed through a agency (popular in developing countries) where the person lives with the family taking care of the elder. You pay a monthly fee to the agency and they pay the caretaker's salary after taking their cut.
c) A on-demand comprehensive health services company. This can be a non-profit/for-profit organization offering various services (medical/support/companionship etc.) to the elderly who live alone or have nobody to look after them. Services could be offered based on the needs and on a yearly/monthly contracts or as needed per call. Think of it as Uber/Wework for Healthcare. I think this is the need of the hour since there is a huge population above 50 worldwide living alone. Just helping them maintain their health will go a long way towards easing the pressure on the healthcare system leaving the hospitals free to serve those who need it most.
To drive the point home, watch this 3-part documentary series on "Living and Dying Alone in Singapore" to get an idea of what awaits many senior citizens - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d499mlwXWfk
The organization mentioned in the above documentary and from which we can learn is here - https://chenghongwelfare.org
Day centers for old people used to be very popular
But I would say there should be better health lifestyle guidelines for everyone to avoid being incapacitated. How in rural Europe and Africa you still see 80 and 90 year olds still digging land, saw an 100 year old lady, in Africa, still doing accounting for local businesses
Maybe is the lack of sleep, unhealthy food, too much coffee, alcohol excess, too many pills... but people should watch out the bill will come
This is the problem that needs fixing.
And not with fuckin' robots with butt lasers.
