Everything You Wanted to Know About Technology and the Future of Aging | CABHI Summit 2022

[Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you hello to all the Brilliant Minds in the audience and those we are privileged to have here for the panel everything you wanted to know about technology and the future of Aging I'm Clara your digital MC and I'm excited to introduce you to everyone on stage moderating the panel today is a familiar face Dr Allison sekuler the president and chief scientist here at cabi outside of her groundbreaking research and Innovation work Dr sukula recently learned how to play the drums proving it's never too late to explore new hobbies on the panel we have Dr David Lindemann the director of citrus Health a baritone renowned for his work and his karaoke parties am I sensing the makings of a band perhaps fingers crossed Dr Alex mihalidis is the scientific director and CEO of age well and he might have the best beard of anyone in the longevity sector Sasha Spellman the startup collaboration director at AARP Innovation lab helped organize CES a conference almost as great as the cabbie Summit we also have Erica Lloyd general manager Healthcare and education at Seoul machines like everyone on the panel Erica strives to bridge the connection between Healthcare and Technology with a focus on how we can all be more kind and she's the one that was kind enough to invite me to MC definitely a group of rock stars I'm glad you could make it and happy learning over to you Dr sekuler thank you so much Clara it's great to see you welcome everybody to the panel everything you wanted to know about technology and the future of Aging I'm Allison sekuler and it's a pleasure to be speaking to you today from the traditional lands of the anishinaabe HUD nishoni here on wendot and mississaugas of the Credit First Nation I think that the opening that we had really sort of set the stage for what we're going to be talking about we hear a lot about how technology is changing the way that we age but it can be difficult for the average person to make sense of all of the different solutions that are out there so I want to just start by asking each one of our panel members what is the one technology that you're most excited to see currently impacting or about to impact older adults or caregivers and and Erica Given the introduction I'd like to start with you and and hear your take on it and Kyra Elson and thank you and hi panelists um I'd be crazy if I didn't say digital people because that that's that's the technology that that I'm in charge of helping connect to to healthcare organizations and I want to take a moment to step back so a digital Workforce if you like and you've met Clara the idea is it does two things one the digital person connects one-on-one with patients so they can have a personalized conversation about their health and behavioral change and support companionship all of that kind of thing with empathy but the second side is really to think about the sector itself a sector under intense pressure in terms of you know uh resignations and burnout and stress and this painful and ability for demand and Supply to be met and this growing ocean of unmet need our view is a digital Workforce that has this empathy and importantly and I know you guys will bring this up connects to other intensely useful device or AI data sets or other types of Hospital patient management system can augment human beings who work in the sector so our idea is to not replace people but give them the relief to live their best lives and take some of the workload away that's great Sasha you work with a lot of different kinds of folks at the AARP and I'm wondering if you building on that answer uh you know what you think of digital people but also what other Technologies do you think are the most critical for us right now yeah and thanks again for having me today I'm so excited to be on this panel um yeah so we at AARP Innovation Labs work with a number of we call age Tech Solutions um we Define that as product services and experiences both B to C B to B that are helping Empower people to choose how they live as they age as they get to that 50 plus age range um so we have a portfolio about 60 companies in various verticals of aging and it's it's difficult to pick one I'm going to mention two um just uh just to keep it fair but um focusing on digital health and kind of building off um what Erica was saying we have several digital Health applications that are aiming to help with the the caregiving crisis one of them is called ionic care and they are essentially a support and care coordination platform specifically for family caregivers to help encourage Empower and equip them with the tools so they no longer have to do that caregiving alone um and basically it helps coordinate a support team for those day-to-day activities that you may encounter when you're in that caregiving role so things like Child Care Pet Care House errands it will help give you that team um and kind of manage that support throughout the platform um and it really helps just keep you up to date on your loved one and and have that team support so you don't feel alone um in that role and then um the other area I want to touch on that we're seeing a rise of companies apply to our pitches and challenges that we run throughout the year that basically get that access to our accelerator program is in and I'm sure other panelists will agree in the Telehealth the remote Health monitoring space um those sorts of solutions are so important to help provide that um quicker more timely more accurate data to Physicians caregivers and those that need the care so we have a few Solutions in our portfolio that tackle remote patient monitoring a company called Telus is a great example they have this beautiful designed Hardware solution that attaches to a wall and you utilizes sensors and AI to predict and analyze the health of a person without the use of wearables or video and so basically within a five meter radius they can track real-time data like heart rate breathing rate your sleep and give that all back to the physician so that's just one example but there's a lot of really interesting areas in the space yeah and just following on that David you and I recently had a conversation in a different context where we were talking about exactly that idea around predictive science for Precision Health and aging and I'm wondering uh if that if if Sasha's description of of tools and Technologies does that fit with where you see the future going or do you have other ideas in in mind uh absolutely Allison uh and again just building on my two colleagues I would certainly uh concur on the different types of approaches on the workforce but then also as we're looking at Telehealth and remote training but adding very quickly everything from virtual reality to different types of Smart Homes to voice all the different areas that we're seeing emerge very quickly and robustly and I think it's not a silver lining but it's uh something that came from the pandemic that we have seen rapid movement in this area but behind it all in my area that I would reinforce would be just as you would uh alluded to Allison that we're seeing uh issues around data and data analytics is really being fundamental so machine intelligence as we would frame it as we've been building out the next generation of data scientists computer scientists engineers who are working behind the scenes to bring all of these programs to life that's where we're seeing uh remarkable change folks may not understand that we have seen advances in compute power in the speed of which we're seeing analytics being able to be done the power of machine intelligence machine learning to rapidly do different types of Technology Advanced Technologies that could not have been done even a few years ago so As We Lay are these in I think that we're going to see the data analytics behind all of these new technologies really come to the fore and they'll be able to both make things more ubiquitous we'll see interconnectivity which will allow them to come together but it'll be the the data that we'll be driving it that I think will really be transformative over the next few years yeah and just following that because because Citrus where where you're running the Citrix group it is a very interdisciplinary group um and similarly Alex the group that you run in age well I mean the whole the whole raison d'etra of age well is that it's bringing together people across all of these different kinds of areas similar to the work that David's doing in California and I wonder you know your perspective coming I mean age well is all about aging and technology so I'm wondering if you know following on that where you see data where you see uh the the future Innovations coming together yeah thank you Allison and great it's a great pleasure to be part of this panel um yeah just to build upon this you know what Dave was talking about you know kind of looking under the hood so to speak these Technologies is you know this huge advance in the area of artificial intelligence and machine learning you know you know when I started in this field 20 plus years ago um it was kind of unheard of of using techniques some of the artificial intelligence world in the area of age Tech and you know we kind of gradually grew in the past I would say five years there's been this huge explosion uh where people are applying things such as deep learning and predictive algorithms Etc to this area and you know I see great potential there you know imagine uh and it's not even imagine right now we are able to take all the data that we've been talking about and and predict who who may develop a cognitive impairment who may uh you know develop further uh complications because their diabetes or their congestive heart failure you know these are things that are happening now and it's it's fascinating to see on how quickly the uh you know the theoretical AI folks around the world are jumping on board the uh in age Tech because we are presenting such interesting problems such as interesting and complex data sets to them that they all want to be working with them and in helping us build up these Solutions so um you know over the next several years it's going to be fascinating to see and in fact I was in a meeting last week with our Quantum Computing folks uh here at the University of Toronto and they were talking about aging as a you know a big area of application for Quantum Computing in the area you know down the road so again amazing things are lying ahead for us it's interesting I'm going to throw this open to the whole panel because I think you you've all pointed to the great Potential from some of these new approaches but I also know a lot of people are sort of thinking in the back of their heads but what about all these stories we've heard around how AI can be used for evil for example or it can be programmed you know to be able to focus on certain things and not others we all have heard for example you know the the cases where face recognition systems based on AI don't necessarily recognize faces of color as well um and and you know if there's similar kinds of concerns that we have uh around privacy issues uh and you know we worked at cabbie with a number of solutions that were either using Machine Vision or other kinds of monitoring and and there was a real concern about being spied on uh you know and uh you know Erica to the point that you've got in your um artificial people you know there's there's a huge concern could you create people that are going to be deceptive as opposed to helpful so how do you make sure that we're doing age tech for good I guess is the question what do we need to do to make sure that the potential for ageism that's you know could potentially be encoded in the age check itself that that we avoid that um you know how do we avoid uh invasive data collection and make sure that people are developing and and using H Tech in an ethical way so I'll just open that to the floor whoever wants to go first let me respond Allison and and that in some way the you know the the horse is already bolt here and my view is this next wave of Technology needs to pull back what's already happened and one of the things we've found let's say you have a Siri or an Alexa right now that's taking different types of data um when you put a human-like face on it one that can respond to you it empowers the user to say things like where's my data going no stop that turn that off no I didn't order that whatever so in some ways humanizing technology to be more responsive and Powers the user to take their power back and manage the data for us we don't hold any data and state and that's pretty straightforward but my view in order to avoid lots of the isms or replicate existing status quo of exclusion um means co-design so it's about creating these use cases and applications with the people to whom it should empower and I think that it's really important um to break the binaries that we've had in the past and learn from some of the messes frankly that have been made in terms of privacy and some of the harm courts frankly by the current social media platforms and the lessons for us is to have this next wave of AI power Tech to be for good and we care a great deal about that so those are my sort of quick thoughts I was just going to piggyback on the the human insights that you're mentioning Erica because I couldn't agree more um we have a design thinking team in-house that we help our startups uh with design Sprints to really test and validate to make sure they're utilizing human-centered design and focus on everyday people on how they're building their solution I think a lot of companies sometimes can get too focused on wanting to potentially sell into a future partnership with maybe a Healthcare company or a payer or some dream partner and lose sight of that individual end user um so I agree it's completely very important to listen to what people actually need um and then the other thing I just wanted to quickly mention is that um AARP we mentioned a lot the 50 plus demographic is who who we kind of Our member base is built off of um but it's important to recognize that there's a diversity of needs within that 50 plus demographic um and so to really not view the 50 plus as a monolith um there's different generations and different needs represented within that generation and so people are living longer lives now and age Tech Solutions can be viewed as products for maybe the second half of life um so that's something that we really help with our companies and our accelerator program is to leverage in-house research and other resources to really Define the course segment or core user within that demographic and we always we always say engage early and engage often right I think David you wanted to chime in as well yes well in another area to engage early I think uh here we are at Berkeley in the heart of Silicon Valley and in many respects in the heart of a lot of the issues around privacy security um the issues of uh potential misuse of a lot of the Technologies we're looking at particularly social media I would uh go back to early engagement first and foremost as we train the next generation of scientists of clinicians the individuals who have to do it it does start as Eric and Ashley said with the individual and helping Empower individuals to actually call out and look for their own areas but how do we get designers how do we get the co-designers how do we get the scientists to make sure that their their imbued with this approach and philosophy second how do we work with industry and organizations we have the largest companies based here here and it's obviously it goes far beyond aging but how do we work with them to understand the importance of this and make sure we do protect individuals we're always looking glass half full of the benefits but it's making sure underneath that we have privacy security uh first and foremost and finally one of the things we've done here in California is we this last year the governor put forward a master plan on Aging for the next decade we put a great deal of work into that in both from the research Community the technology Community but again from the entire aging Network how we look at that in a key fundamental point is how do we protect the most vulnerable and that covers technology so we can really look forward to the uh how we can benefit from that and I think from a policy perspective we have to make sure that that is put forward so that we have guardrail sales we have boundaries it's as much as we would like to think everybody will be looking at privacy and security first and foremost I think we'll always have to make sure we are the uh champions for that going forward and and how Alex I want to turn to you because one of the other roles that Alex holds is and correct me if I get the title wrong is is as um associate vice president International Affairs at the University of Toronto so uh you know you do a lot of work managing privacy issues and and all these other things uh around research with lots of countries and I know David you've got a lot of international uh collaborators as and and same same with the other the other guests um when it was mentioned for example that aging is not a monolith there's different cultures there's different people different backgrounds how do you make sure that the protection is not just for the Canadian approach or the American approach or Australian approach or you know that but there's a global approach to it because people are are coming at it from different perspectives yeah and I absolutely that that's important that you know you need to understand the context within which you're developing the technology for and you know the technology that we're designing for the North American context you know is absolutely not going to work for the context you know in in various parts of Asia or various parts of Europe or or the global South even right where you know obviously we have a lot of you know super-aged countries that are facing even more difficult challenges than we are here in North America so again it comes back to what everyone was saying you know working directly with the end users understanding their needs understand the context of their um various aspects whether it's cultural whether it's gender Choice whether it's um you know the aspects of their ethnicity and you know we see that here obviously a lot in Canada where we have a very diverse culture and you know in age well we've actually set up you know what we call Innovation hubs uh in the north because what we develop you know here in urban centers typically do not work in our Northern Communities and our indigenous communities and that may be right from a lack of infrastructure but most likely due to we don't understand some of the cultural practices that need to be built into these these Technologies as well so you know this is not just a an issue if you if we leave Canada but obviously here in Canada as well so you know we try really hard to educate our researchers around these various aspects we try to educate as David said the Future Leaders in this era which is really really critical and we also try to educate our policy makers and our industry members around us as well in terms of what needs to be considered uh maybe Alice in the last point I'll just add is um it's not only though working with the end users it's also working across disciplines as well right and you know don't let you know the US Engineers go out and just build the tech we need to have people from the humanities and the social sciences you know helping us and working with us to ensure that we understand some of the issues going forward as well yeah David Allison if I could just add a build on Alex's uh hit one of the most important issues for us all and that is the issue around culture the issue around the diversity of our older uh population uh all of us as we're aging uh in the last two years we have tackled a few of these uh problems and a perfect example was as we have developed new remote Technologies to go into affordable housing probably in the United States one of the most vulnerable populations who was particularly hit hard uh through uh due to covet and the isolation Etc as we all know but the key issue when we went into these buildings when we helped develop pure Based training to help do digital literacy and bring Technologies in there the variation the differences of individuals in several buildings we had over 10 languages being spoken we had different cultural issues for each population or group so again this just shows the importance of doing this Google translate doesn't work yet to capture this and be able to bring a lot of the digital uh wonderful devices that all this whole group has been working on and so I see that as still being underlying this one of the biggest hardest nuts to craft for us all and that we're going to have to constantly Focus either directly because it's occurring or indirectly because we may be missing those cultural biases yeah because you want something that you can spread and scale but it also has to be personalized to have the most impact so Eric I'm wondering when you're thinking about your artificial people like how do you deal with the diversity issues to make sure that your artificial people are going to have the most impact for whomever it is that they're working with you design it is it one size fits all or how do you take diversity into account I think that's a really important point and and and I think the the the word that I've been thinking about in terms of the common denominator here it's around um it's around the sort of multifunctional groups that design things and we have ethicists so ethicists can work on multiple levels is to inspire the engineers to think differently and to work with the customers to think about how they may want to create these these Solutions but right now we know a couple of things one that people respond better in terms of taking information absorbing it accepting it and using if if the mechanism by which they receive it looks and sounds like them respects them reflects them and they have the choice so I mean our digital people we can create with any ethnicity age and or gender binary or other ways and I think because they're digital um you can kind of cut out the the the what you call it the existing binaries and that people can create or choose a Persona that works for them and we're finding this really powerful and and when we add that to some of these tally health and connected device mechanisms now with populations who are able to be more included we're working in Africa and India and other places with new four and five G Technologies the opportunity is for us as a collective Healthcare Community thinking around aged care how to reach people that you don't touch today I mean I understand something like 40 of people on our planet have zero Health Care so how do you in an inclusive way bridge that Gap and democratize some of these Services um those are my kind of thoughts on it and it's around trying to crank up the positive um and again put that choice in the hand to the people wanting access to the services yeah I love that phrase that democratizing that the health services and and it's about helping have the biggest impact on people's lives and I wonder if if people put their their futurist hats on I know you all love to do this um Sasha if you're thinking uh 10 20 years in the future what are all of the sort of developments that we're talking about now what are they going to mean for the lives of the average adult uh either older adults or caregiver uh what sort of impact will we see on people's lives and how will their lives be better we hope yeah it's a good question and I actually wore my future of age Tech is here uh gear from AARP um but so my aspirational hope um for that is that all these developments will help um like for the caregiving role specifically to be less focused on things like everyday household tasks and more focus on that we're talking a lot about the human and empathetic role of providing that comfort and companionship just on a personal level why I connect so well with the age Tech space is I grew up with grandparents who have both had Alzheimer's and Dementia and from a young age witnessed that physical and mental toll it takes on it took on my mom and on the family in general um taking on that that caregiving role and so um being able to use technology to help with those everyday household tasks to give more quality time um with your loved ones um the reality is uh we don't have enough caregivers to support um the increasing number of older adults that will live on this planet in 2050 and so it's just so important to really help find ways to make those everyday household chores more simple so that's what I'm really excited to see is is to help people maybe within that sandwich generation that might be taking care of a spouse of a loved one of a parent we have again several solutions that we're really excited about in that caregiving space finding ways to build financial support for them get the information or access to care navigation they might need and at the end of the day help them be the best caregivers that they can be so the caregiving space is one that I'm really focused on right now I've been talking about a lot today but I just think it's so important absolutely absolutely Alex your thoughts yeah you know I think my hope is that everyone is in control of their own health their own Wellness you know we are in control of you know not just our data but the way that we wish to age where we want to age and the types of supports are available to us you know it's and it's one of those things too that you know my hope is always being that um you know we forget about we actually forget about this whole notion of age Tech because you know why when I turn 50 or 65 all of a sudden do they say these Technologies benefit me so you know I imagine a world where from the day I'm born to the day I die you know it's the same set of technologies that are adapting with me using artificial intelligence my home is changing with me as I as I grow older and and allowing me to again stay in control of my wellness and health and help me stay where I want to be um so I you know I hope we start to take more of a life course approach to this as opposed to well you're 65 now here you go here's your smart home system right I'm very optimistic about where we're going with things and and David you often take a sort of broad societal view toward aging so I'm wondering from that perspective also uh your your view of the future here uh thank you Allison and again uh I joined our colleagues here in looking at the very positive side of this not only for older adults themselves of course but as Sasha's nicely made point for caregivers but also as we're looking at for the workforce providers what I see ideally in the next years decades going forward is that the technology is Alex is referred to becomes ubiquitous that it is embedded in everything we do whether again it's the sensors robotics Etc that we take this and uh what a wonderful example Eric has shown us of how we actually just interact and we'll consider interacting with uh Avatar going forward so I see the positive side in that it'd be very um Universal I ideally that it's we aren't even thinking the technology itself on the one negative side though I really want to make sure we look at and that is we still are at Great risk of a disconnect of a bifurcation of really uh of a two-tier approach where so much so many people in our countries and around the globe will have access to these Technologies but when we don't even have Broadband as a utility as a so it really it's a social determinive health going forward we need to have this type of connectivity and be thinking globally around how everybody will have access to broadband mobile Etc yeah and Eric you talked before about the democratization of these health services so I'm assuming that that's part of the future that you see um to address David's concerns yeah and what we're seeing is developing nations and spaces are privileging the need for this Broadband access and it can sort of leap frog infrastructure but I think we all need to be very vocal about the need for that to be more considered and to have more attention on I think the pandemics obviously accelerated the use case and the requirement here yeah I just want to end the panel with um giving you a chance each to say one word I mean you can expand on a little bit but if there's one word that comes to mind about the future of aging and Technology what would that word be and and why Erica we'll start with you empathetic and why because I think we do need to treat the person as a human as a person not a demographic or a number and empathy means empowerment for them to be connected to the services the data and importantly the people they need to live rich lives but the reverse of that is let them contribute do you know it's not all top down where is the empathy to empower them to take control of their own lives and their own health as well so to me it's empathy empathy Alex I'm going to say uh cautiously optimistic I'm going to hyphenate it to make it one word um and again academic cheating exactly um you know I'm optimistic then you know we're going to continue to do great work in this area but I think as we've all talked about we have to be cautious as we go forward on this and and not get ahead of ourselves not get ahead of the people that were all ultimately serving and really at the end of the day you know understanding exactly what's going to be needed and not just throwing a bunch of gadgets at a problem here so yeah Sasha such a good question um I'm gonna say choice because I think it's super important that we continue to keep in mind to give older adults the CH the opportunity to choose how they want to continue to live their lives as they get to this age range um Technologies in the aging and play Space is something that that we look for every day I've talked about remote patient monitoring caregiving giving everyone the tools they need so they can continue to live the lives that they want to live without that friction of things getting in the way so I think yeah choice will be very important great and the last word on the panel goes to David then wonderful after are those three perfect choices um the only thing I could add would be nascent that I think we're still really just at the very beginning of the way we'll be able to see technology applied in integrated it become again a really uh transformative as we know so that could be another word to put out there for the way not only older adults but as uh we've all said way Society will function in the future and if it weren't for programs like Cabbie and Baycrest to do this we wouldn't be moving this far along so it's really wonderful you brought us all together Allison to to share those ideas because the future just holds so much more promise in this area of Technology yeah and I want to say thank you to all of you for joining us here today we could go on for hours on this unfortunately we have a limited amount of time so empathy cautiously optimistic Choice nascent I think other words that could have come up from our conversation ubiquitous uh democratization uh fairness ethics ethical uh diversity uh you know there's so many words and and I think that um collaboration and um and and friendship I think uh fit in here as well because I think it's only by all of us working together uh in these interdisciplinary collaborative sorts of ways that we're going to see the advances that that we're hoping to um and and we can actually reach that vision of the future world that I think you all see and that everyone wants to the end so thank you so much for taking the time to join us here today thank you thank you thank you foreign

2023-04-03 01:43

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