Source: AARP
A few years ago, the AARP Thought Leadership group identified nine areas where it saw opportunities for technology to help address the needs of seniors 50 years and older in the report Health Innovation Frontiers. At the Consumer Electronics Show this week, AARP unveiled Caregiving Innovation Frontiers. The report could serve as a roadmap to guide or reinforce entrepreneurs’ approach to the market. developing the market to support caregivers across six segments.
Services to support daily activity like meals, delivery, transportation and home repair represents the largest segment followed by care transition support. Other segments identified in the report include care coordination, social well being, quality of life, and health and safety awareness.
It estimates the size of the caregiver market will increase substantially in the next five years from $42.9 billion in 2016 to $72 billion by 2020. Alarmingly, about 80 percent of that includes out-of-pocket expenses by caregivers and care recipients, according to the report.
With the Caregiving Innovation Frontiers research project, AARP and Park Associates outlined a few goals:
- Guide entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses to clearly defined market segments;
- Highlight the needs and challenges of unpaid caregivers, from the caregivers’ perspective;
- Highlight existing solutions but also point out pitfalls, pain points, and lessons learned;
- Identify gaps between existing solutions and those that are still needed.
Of all the areas the report highlights, the need for better transition support and care coordination are among the most interesting. Several health IT startups have rolled out different approaches especially for finding professional caregivers and seniors who are compatible.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Caregiver startups have been a popular area for digital health startups. Honor, launched an on-demand service last year that lets families book a caregiver for specific needs for small periods of time when family members need a break or have other commitments. Some others include Hometeam, Cariloop, Room2Care, and UnaliWear.
Although the care coordination software and solution market has received institutional investment and care providers have invested heavily in this area, the report notes that consumers have yet to benefit from them in a meaningful way.
Transition support covers a broad swathe of areas from adapting homes for seniors’ needs to helping caregivers and seniors figure out the best longterm care options.
Although this report gives a bird’s eye view of the general market segments of interest to caregivers, the plan is to produce a series of reports that focus on the subsectors that could include areas such as medication management, personal safety monitoring, and recovery support.
