After the Genetic Marker Test, Living to 100 Had Better Be Better

Can we get the care we want?

Line up to learn your longevity likelihood. Aren't you just loving the opportunity we will soon have to download that free genetic marker test kit, the one that with 77% accuracy will tell whether we will live past 100? Boston University scientists have “no plans to profit” from the results, but they will make the kit available later this summer. (Warning: analysis of the results will be costly.) I am so struck by how the law of unintended consequences could play out, especially in areas of insurance: as with a home test kit for Alzheimer's, people might be more likely to purchase long-term care insurance. With a longevity test on the market, how long will the term need to be in term insurance? Taking it a step further, should insurance companies offer free kits as a marketing device? Should your doctor know that you've taken such a test? Should a health insurer know? What happens to rates, deductibles, and lifetime caps? What kind of housing and support systems would we want if we knew we could live to 100 or more (or if we knew we would suffer from Alzheimer's)? What would our families do with that information?

Which brings me to home care—what we want. So let's just imagine that many more of us are going to make it to 100 and that we fear nursing homes and obsessively want to stay in our own dangerous-but-familiar houses. Of course, we will want to be there all alone in our later years, visited only by home health or companion aides from the growing home care industry (with any luck, they won't visit us too often, though, and draw attention from the SEC). Hopefully, the aides are vetted, well paid, well trained, dedicated, personable, and the “low-turnover” type. Hopefully, they will take us to events and social activities and make sure we are well-monitored and Skype-connected to our far-flung relatives—if not in the home, then by driving us to places like this just-opening and Skype-enabled Clearwater Aging Well Center. Hmm. Do you believe this?

We have the time to craft a better experience. Let's face it, the lonely boomer at home at 100 is unlikely: our mismanaged bodies may not permit it, even if the above scenario were realistic. That doesn't mean we aren't going to live far beyond ye olde expectations. If we know how long we might live, we also need to imagine and advocate for lower-cost, longevity-friendly housing for those “middle” decades of the 70s and 80s that will also suffice to house us when we're 95 and low on money. We need a rethink of nursing homes, blending them into services for seniors in a community, so that they move beyond their current status as anathema. That might mean more consolidation, along with blending of skilled services, first into communities, and then those services into group housing that will match our budgets and interest profiles.

Can we get the care we want? Where we'll be living, the aides are kind to us: they form friendships and support each other and are well supported by management. They enable us to find friends and continue to do activities we like—with others, not alone. Where we'll be living, monitoring our well-being will be welcome and standard; enabling our tech-connectedness will be understood and supported by management and staff. When we move in, we won't need to take our tech gadgetry with us; they'll be part of the residence, with Kindles and Nooks in the library, wireless in our home, and appropriate use of video. Maybe useful and friendly robots (not just Paro-fluffy-friendly) will free up the repetitive and low-skilled labor, doing so at low cost, freeing up staff to focus on higher-skill tasks. This has happened in every single other industry in the past 50 years: why not this one?

We are in a crisis of mistaken expectation—thus tech opportunity. In today's economically challenged world, we suffer from a lack of product and service marketer realism (see Tom Mann's Mature Market blog about senior housing developers) all along the continuum of care to the consumer. Everyone wants things the way they were (as in the above senior housing example), or they don't know what they want but are shocked at what they actually get, whether it is with the doctor, the hospital, or the home care agency. Those who are creating and selling tech-enabled products and services have an opportunity to sell into the gap, whether it is in cost reduction, family expectation management, or enablement of standardized back-office consolidations for service providers—who want to facilitate a better longevity experience at a lower cost.

By Laurie Orlov
Aging in Place Technology Watch Blog

[First posted July 5, 2010, at Laurie's Aging in Place Technology Watch Web site.]