How Do We Best Track ‘Activity’ in Older Adults and Optimize for Each Person?

One of the common outcomes we face as we get older is that overall activity levels start to diminish for most (but not all) people and this has often huge consequences not only in physical health terms but in what is often a negative mental spiral downwards. This applies to physical activities like walking, individual exercise and sporting participation, for example, but also includes less time spent in social and mental activities such as playing cards or board games, singing together or participating in a book club, etc. Particularly when people come along to an adult daycare center, or live in an independent or assisted living community, in recent years we have seen the rise of very helpful software which helps to overcome this activity challenge in a number of ways. This includes:

· Listing activities that are made available (and when and where they are taking place)

· Publicizing the above in multiple places (such as on bulletin boards, on TV screens or even pushed to smartphones and tablets)

· Allowing for easy digital RSVP’s/signups and any special needs older adults may have

· Offering auto-alerts and reminders to people so as not to forget or miss an event

· Allowing participants to comment on activities/events and even share details with others (even friends and family)

Despite these benefits to the older adult activity participant, the major benefit of such event/activity management software goes well beyond the above and may include:

• Store and regularly update older adult bio’s and records
• Track activity/event RSVP’s and attendance/non-attendance
• Auto-message event/activity signups/attendees and non-attendees at will
• Analyzing attendance data to assess activity popularity
• Streamline admin tasks to focus on older adult well-being (individually and as a group)
• Create and even print vent/activity signage (physically or digitally)
• Create newsletters to promote events/activities to encourage others to join in
• Tracking older adult chosen activities in order to improve levels of engagement
• Measure older adult engagement and well-being to enable proactive intervention
• Use rich older adult profiles to inform future wellness side program design
• Track the popularity and attractiveness of particular activities or events
• Better plan for transport or assistance to activities or events, where necessary
• Better plan for congregate meal types and satisfaction to food-relat events

· Create Individual older adult Stories/Timelines for later reference and use

· Create better more effective activity/event staffing and handovers

· Draw on activity/event engagement data to enhance knowledge about older adults

· Test the effectiveness of event/activity timing, duration content and tuition quality

· Analyze a whole range of single and multi-event/activity data to future optimize

· Save event/activity coordination staff time and cost

· Provides metrics on what activities/events appear to lead to greatest satisfaction

· Using digital means to keep families connected to give them more peace of mind

It’s easy to see that the above list for managers providing care to older adults is 4 times longer than the one for the individual and his or her family, so the questions in my mind are twofold:

1. How Do We Best Track Activity in Older Adults and Optimize for Each Person?

2. Who is doing this well in the current market?

Let’s tackle these in order.

1. How Do We Best Track Activity in Older Adults and Optimize for Each Person?

In an ideal world, we would dispense with paper and pen/pencil (and a manual approach) and digitize as much of our work as we can. This is often best done with smartphone, tablet and desktop signup and interaction in general. If we can do this, we can build a rich data set for each older adult (which is easily updated and added to) and then record their early preferences and choices as to what they are most interested in doing by way of activities and events. But, of course, intention is not the same thing as action, so the next step is to record when people actually show up, stay, engage and come back (repeat positive behavior). We might even collect statistical and free-form feedback on each of an older adult’s experiences every time and use this data to undertake a range of analyses including what classes/activities/events to maximize and minimize (or eliminate) when to hold them, how long they should run, with who and how to improve them. In some cases, the above data may lead to highly individualized plans for activities for a given older adult but in the main it is more likely to lead to more granular insights into preferences which are common or similar across groups of people and then activities can be designed to fit the expressed need. This is a lot better than ‘dragooning’ everyone into playing ‘bingo’ at 2 pm or other fixed event schedules for all.

2. Which early-stage companies are doing this well in the current market?

An article such as this is likely to become outdated very quickly if we produced a list of all the current organizations which provide Activity Tracking and Management software and system to assist older adults in particular. In addition, this may be such companies main endeavor, or part of a wider suite of services provided, of which activity management is only a part. Nonetheless, in the list below are 5 companies that are providing much of what we have been talking about here as a core part of their service. It is therefore worth looking at each of these web sites to see what they cover in detail and make a judgment call about what best meets older adult and family needs best and most easily but also which of these adds most value to the care coordination staff and businesses that provide care in a number of different older adult settings.

Caremerge (website: https://caremerge.com/)

Caremerge’s headquarters is in San Francisco and the CEO is Nancy Koenig. The business was founded in 2010.

Cubigo (website: https://www.cubigo.com/en)

Cubigo’s headquarters is in San Francisco, California and the Founder and CEO is Geert Houben. The business was founded in 2011.

Lifeloop (website: https://ourlifeloop.com/)

Lifeloop is a Private company stated in 2014 based in Omaha, Nebraska. Amy Johnson is the Co-Founder & CEO.

Sagely (website: https://gosagely.com/)

Sagely’s headquarters are in Honolulu in Hawaii and the CEO is Alex Bitoun. The business was founded in 2014.

Touchtown (website: https://www.touchtown.com/)

Touchtown’s headquarters are in Oakmont, Pennsylvania and the CEO is Ted Teele. The business was founded in 1998

Conclusion

Activity management software can help not only older adults to know what is scheduled but reserve for it, attend and find both events that they can enjoy but, in many cases, diminish feelings of loneliness or even depression so often experienced by older adults, especially as they advance in age-put simple it helps them to stay engaged. Says Amy Johnson-CEO of Life Loop for example “Engagement tracking at senior living communities is much more than just taking attendance. It is capturing critical data and telling the story of each of the residents. This is a key step in truly understanding the culture of a community.”

Perhaps even more importantly such systems can provide much-needed data and ‘deep-dive’ potential analytics to better understand what to organize, when, with who and how, and tailor it to individual and group needs (and add considerable value on all sides) particularly when it comes to better overall wellness. As Alex Bitoun, CEO of Sagely says “We believe organizations are starting to see the need for engagement and wellness programs decision-support systems based on actionable data. Those powerful insights allow program owners to show ROI and take the guessing out. Combined with core efficiency tools, this allows communities to better engage residents, and operate considerably more effectively.”

Jon Warner is CEO of Silver Moonshots-www.SilverMoonshots.org, a research and mentoring organization for enterprises interested in the 50+ older adult markets with its own aging focused virtual accelerator. He is also Chapter Ambassador for Aging 2.0 and Co-chair of the SBSS “Aging in the Future” conference, in Los Angeles