This weekend Mindings was featured at the Health 2.0 conference in London, at a workshop entitled “Health 2.0 Tools for the Elderly”, curated by Digital Health Futurist Maneesh Juneja.
It’s very noticeable that in the “Health 2.0” world the subjects of wellness and telecare feature, but they are often polarised: “cool” wellness products for the young, and “monitoring and control” telecare products for the old.
This can be viewed as a symptom of the healthcare sector being very insular and looking for solutions from establish telecare providers – hence the often heard complaint that telecare hasn’t advanced in thirty years.
“Health 2.0 Tools for the Elderly” took a fresh look at the sector and invited innovators from outside the telecare world to present at this European Health event and asked the questions:
How do we understand the needs of elderly patients?
What role does design play in relation to technology?
Should we incentivise entrepreneurs to develop for the elderly?
Speakers and innovations included:
SpeakSet, whose set-top-box service connects families via the TV (poignant, when 5 million people say TV is their main form of company)
Breezie, a simplified tablet computer to help the technology-shy get online.
MemoryLane Games, demonstrating “Memory Match“ a reminiscence memory game for iPad developed for people living with dementia and memory impairment.
Intelesant, winner of a Guardian award for Innovation with Technology, demonstrating their ELMA tool, for end-of-life care.
Stuart Arnott presented Mindings, and discussed their social isolation clinical trial across Central Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire, and the challenges of connecting the last 5% of technology-shy seniors who may never be able to use a computer or connected device, but could still benefit from the near-ambient social connection and family piece-of-mind that Mindings can provide.
Mindings Team
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