Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care | Hacker News Reader

Tell HN: your next idea should focus on aged care

130 pointsthornjm137 comments

I’m a nobody in a medicine role but with a previous career in engineering.

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>

View on HN

The reality of elder care is that (especially) infirm old folks really need a lot of hard, difficult, unpleasant care that our economic system has made basically impossible for their children and extended families to perform, as would have probably been done in the past. This requirement isn’t going to go away. There will be no cheap, safe, efficient butt-wiping robot, and unmotivated, uninvolved third parties are going to keep doing lousy jobs and getting old folks hurt. Technology is not going to make much of a dent in this one.

This is true for most cases. However in my family we have special circumstances: because my grandfather is a veteran, my father is paid to take care of him. It is an absolutely phenomenal experience for our family and has brought us all together. If we could enable this again for everyone that would be good for everyone in terms of mental health.

I think it would be great if states offered support to people who were willing to be caregivers to their elders and children. These are essential roles that cannot really be replaced.

This is available to anyone in Australia, although ~$500-600 a week isn't enough to support the carer and the one they care for in most personal circumstances. https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/carer-payment

Same in NL, I don't know about the pay though.

Minimum wage by contrast is $915 a week

> care that our economic system has made basically impossible for their children and extended families to perform

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.

This is just a snarky way of saying “incentives drive behavior” which, of course, is actually true and when incentives yield bad outcomes we should interrogate the system that produces them.

Establish UBI and then we can blame families for not wanting to care for their elders, but until capitalism demands dual-income to sustain the nuclear family... we can't unfold that blame blanket you're proposing.

I can’t have kids; I’m single.

Not with that attitude you won't.

The reality is that right now, most people need to work full-time-plus just to get by.

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.

Even if I did want to have kids, I wouldn’t have them to take care of me in old age. What if they move to Japan? Should I have them move back to the US to take care of me?

Nah, we should build a society that can and does take care of its elderly.

If your own kids are not going to care for you, why should someone else's kids?

Because the someone else’s kids had a choice?

What if your kids pre-decease you?

I moved to Japan 13 years ago. My mother developed early-onset Alzheimer's in 2021, and I'm her only child. I relocated her to Japan. It has been immensely stressful but I know she's getting better care and this also avoided the US healthcare system completely bankrupting our family and robbing us of our chance to build multi-generational wealth.

But living in a country with an outsized elderly population/terrible demographics, I can clearly see how the problem will eventually cripple most economies without significant technological augmentation. Large multi-generational families living in very close proximity at least provides for essentially unpaid labor who can share the burdens to prevent caregiver burnout.

And I’m saying technological augmentation will not be enough to avoid that fate

A society based on individual agency and transactional dynamics is foundationally incapable of communally taking care of elderly people as they lose their faculties. Some family member or other personally-invested party has to be involved to represent the interests of the elderly person, many times even clashing with the immediate whims of the person themselves. Leaving this dynamic to third parties in the biz creates too many moral hazards to opt for the easy choices, financially drain the person, and then just walk away. The culmination of this dynamic of course being the modern nursing home, where "patients" lay around getting bed sores while management gets hypersubscribed workers to check boxes on forms that say they're being taken care of.

To be fair the transaction is supposedly something like “old person has added value all their life and now receives some return on investment” but in reality the past (along with other elements of their personhood) typically just disappears once someone loses agency, unless they have a committed and devoted advocate.

Even illness or injury are enough to dehumanize someone, since they make it harder to self-advocate and the system isn’t built to advocate for you — in fact it’s often incentivized to advocate adversarially against you!

> the transaction is supposedly something like “old person has added value all their life and now receives some return on investment”

What you're describing isn't really a transaction though? This dynamic can only exist from family and other longer term personal relationships.

I’m saying even the inhuman transactional model at least has a concept carved out for like, long-term investment and savings. Just playing Devil’s advocate really.

Perhaps I'm missing something here. Why wouldn't an elderly care home invest in such a robot, considering this is one of the most common and time consuming tasks their orderlies need to perform on a daily basis? It seems like it would free up a lot of bandwidth to take in yet more elderly folks, which would be more profit to the care home.

This, on the other hand also younger people are getting old. Future old people might be much more tech-averse

Just brand a bidit with a lifting mechanisms

The butt wiping robot may be called a bidet combined with air drying.

Or have a self-cleaning, self-sanitized shower van with lifts and adaptive equipment make the rounds like an ice-cream truck.

> Technology is not going to make much of a dent in this one.

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.

Agree. Simple stuff that people really need is missing. I mean really simple. I can't read product labels even with serious myopia and a magnifying lens. Only Trader Joe's makes readable shelf signage. Use-by dates take 30 seconds to even find. And there are tons more things. I made a list ...

It's getting longer. Thanks for posting this.

What else is on the list? That's interesting.

Shortly, I just rode out a heat wave. Glad to share.

I'm 75 and very in tune with needs!

@k310 - I have to ask, is k310 your ham radio handle?

k310 is both the Koechel number of a great Mozart piano sonata, but the office number I had at Itek Optical Systems in Lexington, MA, now something else.

When I was crazy interested in ham radio as a kid, I didn't have enough money to buy or build any gear. I'd buy schematics and build stuff in my mind, which may account for some quirks, but they're almost entirely good quirks, which is why I am posting to help others, with problems way bigger than my own. Thanks for asking!

I can share some really important things I’d like to see for seniors. I am leaving out some innovative ideas that go beyond these, because “first things first”.

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.

A program that parses an arbitrary shelf label and then displays a large-print normalized representation (like the nutrition label) would be valuable.

Like Firefox's Reader View for real life.

can i please also have ublock for real life, i am so tired of outdoor advertising, it's basically the only place i see ads now

vandalism as a service

i live in houston which was just hit by a hurricane - one of the upsides being most of the billboards have been shredded, which is a nice improvement over mind polluting ads

thanks hurricane beryl

The ban* on billboards on Interstate highways was thanks to a famous Texan, Lady Bird Johnson.

* The few you do still see today are legacy billboards that date from when the legislation was passed, around 1965.

Imho this is going to be the killer app for Vision headset type devices when they get cheap and available: An AI powered uBlock Origin that can recognize logos and advertising and blank them out.

Exactly.

that is an awesome idea.

The Yuka app can scan the barcode and shows whether the food or cosmetic you scanned is good for you or not.

https://yuka.io/en/

This is idea behind GS1 Digital Link [0], basically QR codes to replace barcodes. The QR code will contain a URL which when scanned provides product information to the consumer.

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.

https://digital-link.com/gs1-digital-link/

An important part of my suggestion was the normalized output, not the advertising data the mfr provides.

The nutrition labels are pretty good (though sometimes the serving size is bogus — that should be normalized by the program). Also the unit cost (price per oz or whatever) is manipulated by the seller or mfr, and that should be usefully normalized too.

iOS has a built-in app called “magnifier” which might be more handy than a lens!

Many product labels and prices are situated very high and very low. I end up taking a photo to capture the info.

I also like to visit thrift stores, and being practical, I snap photos of weird and wonderful items rather than buying them.

I actually ran a health tech startup in this space within the past decade.

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.

Your response makes sense to me, but it also highlights why I've become so disillusioned with "tech" generally over the course of my 25 year career.

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.

> think of tech that would actually improve my life I think about things like a clothes-folding machine,

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.

> or wiping his butt

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.

User resistance only gets harder with older people. They will be set in their ways.

Yep, and that resistance will kill almost all attempts to design tech like this. Anyone who is interested in this space needs to look at what Kimberly-Clark did to make Depends a (more or less) accepted part of aging.

Having worked in high end residential, I can tell ya the LAST person who's going to want to use a bidet is ironically also the hypothetical "grandpa" who's not rich enough to hire someone to wipe his a$$.

Europeans have no problem using them

Every home I've done for a wealthy person, regardless of age, had bidets. But they're also rich enough to hire people to take care of them as they age.

Coming from a working class background, the perception of "European-ness" is the exact - and possibly only - reason your average American old dude wouldn't use one.

I've talked with elderly blue collar working class Australian's who've encountered { bidet's | jet washing arses } for the first time .. once they've used them they almost all 100% don't need convincing that they're desirable.

It's literally an ad campaign | marketing problem .. and given how popular pressure washing youtube videos are, there's one angle to work from :-)

Never seen a bidet in Europe. What country do you have in mind?

Italy has bidet in every bathroom

In Poland it's rare, but it's there. I have one and my last two summer vacation stay places had them.

Up until a couple of years ago you were not legally allowed to build a house without at least one bathroom with a bidet, so essentially all houses built in the past 80 years in the country have bidets

Ah yes, the country named Europe.

Probably Italy. From my experience in the Netherlands, a bidet is quite rare and requires a new toilet in some cases as exposed plumbing went out of fashion 20 years ago so a retrofit is not easy like with most North American toilets.

I grew up in France, every house had one.

Europeans have no problem wearing jean capris with a man purse but that doesn’t mean americans are so utilitarian

I imagine you are allowed to say ass in this context :)

Aw, but it's funny to self-censor for no reason!

You might be wiping their butt because they are wearing adult diapers, not because they can go on the toilet but not wipe.

To be clear, the original "bidet" fixture as found in some older European bathrooms, a second toilet bowl to squat over and manually wash, is far from useful for anyone, let alone the elderly. If people are horrified to hear the word, that's probably what they are picturing. There's also the shower hose dog wash thing which is almost as bad. To avoid confusion, the toilet seat spray feature (which is great) is often termed "bidet seat" or "washlet".

> bidets have this field fully covered

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.

So you have to sacrifice one of two people. Either the old who cannot take care of himself, or the caretaker who has to waste their life taking care of the old.

Tell me you've never taken care of a loved one without telling me you've never taken care of a loved one...

People would and still do deliberately raise some children to be without their own families so that they can be dedicated care takers. Ie not allowing a daughter to marry and such.

Listen, somebody spending years or a decade taking care of a family member is a story as old as time. But let's not pretend it's not an enormous sacrifice.

You've got it all wrong. Entrepreneurs aren't short on ideas; they're short on ideas that will make them rich. Why/Who's paying for a robot to wipe grandpa's butt when "there's a huge volume of exploited laborers keeping the system afloat"?

You could advertise the robot then send and exploited laborer to do the robot job as a success story, could have robot operators in far away lands and for select elderly a robot suit would be sufficient.

Is that going to be cheaper than actual immigrant labor?

Yep. Spend an hour with an elderly person trying to do things like change a password, unsub from a mailing list, connect a Roku, look at a digital photo album, etc. Will blow your mind wide open. We basically need an entire tier of easy internet for the elderly.

Wouldn’t tech illiteracy eventually die out? Millenials are good with tech and gen z even better. It’s probably still a good niche for the next 20 years. On the other hand poor fitness and mental wellbeing seems affects all age groups.

Tech illiteracy will only die out if technology finally plateaus. The elderly were great with the technology that was popular when they were in their forties too, the problem is that technology didn't stand still from there.

Tech literacy seems to be dropping with newer generations.

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.

I think normies (not hn reading outliers) in Gen Z and alpha may have regressed. Younger people come up in the era of devices and apps hiding the existence of a filesystem from you.

I don't think there is any regression. I think if anything, really overestimating how much people understood. Being a millennial and knowing a lot of other millennials and gen-xers, They can drag and drop, but they really don't understand much more than a folder is something files can go in. Files, you can tell them its fairy dust in a box and they'd believe it. Its just magic. I also work on a point of sale system with many users and clients who are gen-x and millenials, and seeing what customer support tackles, I don't think most normies ever really understood.

I’d say the gap is going back to being a large canyon. Just like in the before times, nerds are hyper aware and then everything else is abstracted away for the common person. Anecdotal evidence but my take.

I think so. My only data point though is probably my grandpa. He is nearing 80 and as far as interfacing with consumer tech devices, he is just as proficient as me. The only thing I beat him on is, well, I am a software engineer, so I know how do a little bit more with the guts. I attribute it to, he worked for 'the telephone company' (AT&T) most of his life as a technician and in sales. So he for him, keeping up and learning how to work with new devices is a no brainier for him. My guess is that those of us who are younger, it'll be the same as him.

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.

Companies just get better at being abusive.

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.

What constituted tech literacy 20 years ago won't get you very far today. I'm in my 40's and I see it - people my own age who ... like, they have used computers for 30 years. We were the original online generation, etc etc etc. But the number of things with family, friends, and coworkers - again my same age - which seem absolutely ridiculously simple for the terminal tech-tinkerer like myself but which trip them up is just shocking.

Tech literacy is a moving target.

Not at all! People are increasing _consuming_ tech, not _understanding_ it.

Gen z is more tech illiterate than you would think. I work with a few student interns in this cohort sometimes. “Copy and paste that into notepad and save it as a text file then email it to me” “uhhhh”

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.

Holy cow, yes.

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.

Honestly, I think for some of these types of things we probably need laws, providing minimal levels of support for paid services.

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.

We abstracted ourselves into this. Imagine how the spotify app would have been as an early 2000s website. Loads an informationally dense page in a fraction of bandwidth. User and password box probably immediately visible. Forgot username and forgot password button immediately visible. Customer support email and phone number probably there on the bottom of the page.

Somewhere in the years since we decided basic utility were unsightly.

There have been and are attempts at addressing the usability gap of tech by the more tech illiterate over the years. Particularly, Linux projects such as Ordissimo[1], Eldy[2], and Endless OS[3]. I am sure there are plenty of other projects, as well (including Apple's new iPhone Assistive Access mode[4]. As sad as it may be, the market would probably be non-existent in a decade or two as newer generations enter aged care having already been somewhat familiar with computers and phone technology.

[1] https://www.ordissimo.com/en/why-ordissimo

[2] http://www.eldy.eu/

[3] https://www.endlessos.org/

[4] https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/assistive-access-iphon...

Indeed, I saw some simplified computers over time but everything "behind" them got crazy complex. I did tech for a living and it's still infuriating at times.

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.

When you can just open an applications menu and click every possibly interesting option you are already more proficient in the use of any software than 90% of its daily users. That is the only explanation why I can fix any office worker’s software problems while using a code editor and terminal for 95% of my workday

It's more than just a "tier of easy internet for the elderly" as that alone won't ease the suspicion that something might be going wrong.

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.

https://www.truelinkfinancial.com/

Found them here long ago (YC S13), used them with an alcoholic parent I was acting in a guardian capacity for.

https://hn.algolia.com/?q=truelink

That appears to be a useful solution to part of the challenges in the domain.

I'm not sure what countries that spans (I'm in Australia) so there's perhaps scope for others to expand across other geographic locations.

There's also the "don't babysit me" aspect, a good number of elders are often slowly diminishing in capability and have no desire to be immediately shifted to a full guardianship when what they want is incrementally increasing trusted oversight that they are in control of.

I agree. I’m also looking for the equivalent of a social worker CRM/platform if anyone has any recommendations. I would prefer to not have to roll my own with a contractor if at all possible.

For what context? One person keeping track of all the social workers they are in contact with for personal use?

No, to keep track of consumers of social work for social workers. Think EHR system for social work, for shared provider access for each person in need of care and services, and central tracking for each person of service, care, and resources available and provided.

I’m currently tracking with spreadsheets, which is less than ideal.

I think the general term is "case management" - this one is for foster care https://help.binti.com/hc/en-us/articles/20423755272979-Serv..., and salesforce has a package for it https://www.salesforce.org/products/case-management/

When I googled "social work case management CRM" a ton of stuff came up.

A private network? Separate from the internet? A dedicated device for said network

I think the easy internet is the exact issue. We try and solve friction by abstraction that serves to misunderstand what is fundamentally happening with the computer, adding more confusion that could be avoided. All because we haven’t solves the onboarding problem, merely beat around the bush of it.

Just went through this with my 80 year old father this week. He was attempting to switch his cell service. They kept telling him they sent him a verification code via text...problem is he does not text. He actually turns his phone off completely when he is not making a call. He had no idea how to check the message...nor did he understand that swiping down (android) would show the messages at the top...and the concept of "swipe to answer" was eluding him too...he kept tapping the answer button and getting mad that it wouldn't respond.

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.

I think improvements to the electric-exo-skeleton contraption can keep the elderly mobile for an additional 10 years.. There comes a time when an elderly person cannot take a flight of 2 or 3 step stairs and that's when they stop moving, so if the exoskeleton can get them to the track or a flat area where they can walk, I think it can help tremendously. Additionally, I think those 2 circle zero gravity contraptions might help with circulation. As for the butt wiping, that's a tough one, but only because of the stigma associated with wearing anything on the sphincter, I can see a 12v electric sphincter dilating aparatus being very efficient in controlling bowel movement, but I don't see our childish society accepting them with a straight face.

Big barriers to entry: regulation, liability, and reimbursement/payment

Architect here. (the building kind.) "Aging in Place" and "Universal Design" are two of the most transformative, difficult, subtle, and important problems facing us today. Other countries are building social structures to address the systemic issues associated with aging.

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.

Not about your point to develop a new project, but is the population aging? I know in certain areas, yes, they are, but a quick look at one of those population pyramids shows places like the US, with a more even population age group, meaning the population as a whole isn't generally getting older.

Please enlighten me though, I know almost nothing of this field.

The US doesn't have an even population pyramid, there's a bulge of late baby boomers and late millennials, but none for Gen Z.

This is my source: https://www.populationpyramid.net/united-states-of-america/2...

As you can see, the percentages for each age group are close to each other, meaning it's more even.

It's called a population pyramid because the shape of that graph for a growing population is a pyramid. If you look at some of the African countries on that site (like, say, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania, if you're starting from the United States page), you can see they're closer to a pyramid shape because they have higher birth rates and higher mortality over time.

Also, on the graph you linked to, you can click on the line in the graph of population versus year to the right, and if you start back in the 1950s and work your way along to the present, you can see the big lump of the baby boomers getting older. That's why people say the United States has an aging population.

It's more even than most other developed countries, but it's easy to see there are _significantly_ fewer 0-4s than 30-34. In fact, there are less of every 5-year age group than the 30-34s.

So yeah, that graph shows the US is, on average, getting older. Immigration helps patch the numbers a bit, but the US immigration system attracts older candidates than most.

The Japanese have been supposedly working on robots to support their aging population for a couple of decades now. It sure seems to be extremely difficult to make progress in this field (and in robotics in general).

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.).

We've actually built something in this line and are in the process of open sourcing it in a few weeks. Very small underfunded team, which makes us a little slower.

Inflation and fiscal irresponsibility are central to this issue. It just takes a really selfish generation and a political system that rewards myopic policy to create this sort of gerontocratic inequity. The fix is fiscal responsibility and fostering a culture of personal responsibility rather than a culture of "the government owes it to me" which is pretty obviously not sustainable. The sins of the father... There is no money here, only debts, both monitary and moral.

I think this is some already being looked at in some aging societies. Look at Japan and even China where they have a lack of nursing personnel. They are looking at the humanoid robot hype with a keen eye for supporting people in the future. And there are likely many other research being done with emphasis on these societies that could show us problems that need solutions.

Where i live in an apartment complex the ground floor retail outlets struggle. They'd make awesome podiatry, physio, optical, aged care, you name it. With increasing trend to care in the home, and with apartment living common for the elderly, these kinds of service tenancy seem like a no brainer: your clientele is all around you.

I'm working on a fitness app, I was mostly thinking about myself but as soon as I looked at best-selling fitness books it was clear that the market was pretty much all seniors. Although it could just be that seniors like books more, I also found similar trends in other media.

The exploited laborers part is true and you never know how the care is going.

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.

There is no money in this business to make. Someone who didn't think of their old age in advance definitely hasn't got any money now. Sure, you can try to milk the government, but this is not really a sustainable business.

Many staff in different roles, 3+ shifts a day, 365 days a year is a lot of labour costs. Replacing even a fraction of labour is likely $100K a year of potential investment. More so in expensive labour countries.

Retirement homes are basically in the business of funneling the life savings of elderly residents into their own coffers.

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.

If you think its such a huge obvious problem, i guess the obvious Q is why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and why aren’t you pursuing it? (Assuming you aren’t)

Yes - but it is so hard to find persistence and passion for such problems (at least for me).

I know where you're coming from, 100%. But I want to share something that's stayed with me to this day.

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.

I have been looking at this domain for a while now and thinking about how one might become a "Social Entrepreneur" in this domain. As an example, India has now included all senior citizens over 70 under its Universal Health Coverage umbrella (https://nha.gov.in/PM-JAY) and hence the need for these services/organizations have become more pressing. In developed countries with a large aging population the situation is even more dire.

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

…and let us know before your company goes public

Capitalism or things you can buy are only good for things that can be measured but there are lots of things that need to be and are done in the world everyday that cannot be measured especially coming to self care, child care and elderly care

Loneliness is a big one, maybe boomerMeetup.com

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

The corrollary of this is you need to hustle now because there is maybe 15 years left before the majority of boomers cease to be customers due to dieing and the next generation is much smaller. You need to capture yoyr market share now then weather 20 years of less exciting before the millenials ramp up demand hard again

Just have n64s and phish cover bands in your nursing home and you will capture more of the aging gen x population than you will know what to do with.

In about 5 years the baby boomers will have all hit retirement age. With social security and Medicare there will likely be a significant amount spent on healthcare taking care of this generation.

"There is a huge volume of exploited laborers keeping the system afloat."

This is the problem that needs fixing.

And not with fuckin' robots with butt lasers.

Err, how? They are doing it voluntarily. They want these jobs. They can work at other jobs too, but that would be an education startup opportunity.

Voluntarily? As in they could just stop working and they'd be fine?

As if they prefer this work to not earning money at all. Unless you are really rich, you can’t stop working and be fine too. I surely can’t.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com