"independent living" articles

Market transformations are expanding healthcare into new, non-acute settings, including the connected home, where companies are actively seeking out new growth opportunities. Already nontraditional players are exploring smart home offerings such as security monitoring, which has obvious parallels to home-based health and wellness solutions as well as independent living products and services. Parks Associates research shows: One-third of U.S. broadband households plan to...

Adding connected health applications to a smart home platform opens up additional, complementary revenue opportunities, yet some of these paths will not result in a straight-forward replication of conventional revenue models. This is especially true for applications that touch a patient’s health and require collaboration with healthcare professionals. For others, the smart home industry needs to think outside the box to build channels and experiment with new revenue models. Parks...

Parks Associates senior analyst Jennifer Kent and director of health and mobile product research Harry Wang will be presenting the research firm's latest digital health data in an upcoming webinar " Engaging Consumers with Connected Health Technologies ." This complimentary webinar will take place place Thursday, June 26 at 1 p.m. CST (2 p.m. EST). Parks Associates research shows that consumers are increasingly interested and engaged with digital health tools and...

The McKinsey Quarterly released a research study showing that in 2006, the U.S. spent approximately $650 billion on healthcare more than it should when compared with countries with similar affluent levels and care standards. Most excessive spending comes from avoidable physician office visits for things like prescription refills and preventable use of acute care facilities like a hospital or ER. These services alone account for two thirds of the total excessive amount. The next item is...

Two articles in today’s issue of the Wall Street Journal examined the eldercare market from two different angles. One article highlighted recent budget woes at more than 15 states in the U.S., which resulted in funding cut for home and community care services. The fragile and the disabled are hit particularly hard as states like Alabama, Massachusetts, and Alabama started to scale back various Medicaid Waiver programs usually targeting this vulnerable population. These beneficiaries...

GE made an unspecified amount of investment in New York-based QuietCare Systems in early October, 2008. At the same time, the two companies announced a technology collaboration and co-marketing arrangement. During the last two weeks, I have managed to locate executives from the two companies and here is what I learned. -GE Healthcare will help market Quietcare’s Living Independently product line and services under the brand “Quietcare by GE Healthcare.” David Stern,...

DigiTV, a not-for-profit organization owned by U.K.’s Kirklees Council recently received funding from Europe’s T-Seniority Project to build interactive TV-based telecare solutions to serve the chronically ill and the elderly populations. Last month, it also secured funding from the U.K government to develop digital TV-based interactive care solutions. DigiTV is the major technology facilitator behind its Looking Local portal, which broad content from UK’s local authorities through...

Digital health technologies designed to monitor and care for the elderly population will bring in U.S. revenues in excess of $1.8 billion by 2013. Technological advances will drive this growth in service and hardware revenues, according to Parks Associates’ Taking Care of the Elderly through Digital Technologies. Connected medical, activity, and environmental sensors and fitness measurement devices will bring in more than twice the dollar amount of the low-tech personal emergency...