Silicon Valley is often characterized as a place for young people who are primarily concerned with serving the needs of their own demographic. A growing number of entrepreneurs are working to counter that stereotype, however, and are designing products to improve the well-being of older adults and their caregivers.
PBS's NewsHour program recently highlighted the efforts of an organization known as Aging2.0, which provides mentoring services for startups that target the needs of older demographics. Aging2.0's founder Katy Fike is a former investment banker who has a Ph.D. in Gerontology.
Instead of basing the organization's headquarters in one of the sprawling tech complexes in Santa Clara County, Fike decided to place Aging2.0 at the Institute on Aging, a San Francisco community center for older adults. Fike and her business partner Stephen Johnston told the source that this location allows eldercare designers and inventors to learn about the needs of older adults in person.
The type of startups that Aging2.0 supports range from a maker of a device that tracks medication intake to a mobile application that helps people find experienced chair car drivers to help them get around town. Fike noted that technology is not meant to replace human interaction, but to improve a person's quality of life.
"I think it really augments what we can do," Fike told NewsHour. "I think it fills the time when someone would have been alone. It fills the time when you probably couldn't have gotten there. And I think it also changes and improves the quality of when you are together. You know, if you have been having kind of ongoing interactions remotely, that, when you're together, you're more in sync."
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