From our friends at the Institute for the Future, a kind of storybook report of an “emergent-reality” game they ran with United Cerebral Palsy on the subject of caregiving and caring in the future. If you’ve been following my delicious feed, you’ll see that I’ve been doing some reading about the concept of “aging in place” (or “aging independently” as tagged).
Why? What does caregiving and aging in place have to do with health informatics and patient empowerment (and Washington, DC, and diversity, my other two favorite things, for that matter).
Of course it has a lot to do with all of those things. The senior population is set to double by 2030, the overwhelming majority of them are going to live in conventional housing, they will have less kids, greater education, and potentially greater wealth than their predecessors (but with increasing disparities in this area). As it says in the introduction:
the challenges of caregiving become inextricable from the challenges facing health care systems, civic engagement, and declining cities.
I have been asking myself if the phenomenon of aging-in-place is an invention of various industries; I don’t think it is, right now (but please challenge me on that point). Various interactions in the last 6 months, from meeting Marty Cooper and Arlene Harris in the summer, to interacting with the Innovation Learning Network keeps bringing these themes up.
The report itself summarizes several technologically-powered (or empowered) approaches to supporting caregiving in the 21st Century, including basics on remote sensing, non-cash incentives (time-banks, for example), and transparent reporting and reputation systems.
I also like the way this data was put together, it seems very California Healthcare Foundation -esque with the signature of IFTF, both great things when it comes thinking of the future. See what you think.
