Congratulations to our colleagues in the Friedman Center for Aging on their annual lecture and awards.  In addition to acknowledging the great work of award winners Brendan Lucey, Karen Berry Elbert, and Sherrill Wayland.  The event featured a fascinating keynote from Stephen Johnston, co-founder of Aging 2.0, building a bridge between innovators and startups and the people working with aging and senior care. His keynote was “Better Living Through Innovation:  Responding to an Aging Society.”

Stephen talked about taking perspectives from other industries and applying them to the challenges faced by our aging population – a model we found very useful in our recent Healthcare Hackathon.  He showed us some interesting examples of innovation in transportation, communication/technology, managing bills/finance, meals/groceries, shopping, and medication management, including wearable airbags to prevent injury when falling; personal emergency response innovations; and products that release food fragrances to promote appetite for example.

Takeaways include – new technology must be wrapped in design to reduce the barriers to usage – gadgets don’t have to be “big, beige, and boring.” And check out the Aging 2.0 website for more examples and some awesome resources.  View the keynote presentation here.  Thanks again to our Friedman Center colleagues for introducing this resource to the Skandalaris audience!