Healthcare providers are confronted every day with a growing number of seniors in their care. But how do you get a physician in his or her thirties, let alone a 24-year-old medical student, to truly understand what is like to be old? What about the bankers, in-home caregivers, and others who work with seniors every day providing critical services?
Technologists, regulators, and industry action groups are working now to address these problems by putting the emphasis on empathy. And they are doing it in new and creative ways.
Embodied Labs is working on a project now called “We Are Alfred,” which uses Virtual Reality to help physicians really understand what it is like being an elderly person with declining skills. Participants wear the Virtual Reality glasses, and experience what it is like to sit in a doctor’s office and take a cognitive test when you can’t hear properly, or when your eyes are failing from macular degeneration. The group also simulates the effects of Alzheimer’s when it becomes difficult to make sense out of your surroundings.
The developers hope to make these Virtual Reality simulations part of standard curriculum at medical schools, so physicians can truly understand what their patients are going through. They also hope that these sorts of opportunities will help younger medical students read the symptoms their patients are having more accurately, as hearing and vision loss can often cloud the results of many important cognitive tests.
As seniors decline, so too, do their finances. This is only compounded by the fact that seniors often lack the cognitive skills to deal with their financial matters. This is why the Federal Reserve of Philadelphia recently held a major roundtable discussion between the leaders of nonprofits, government agencies, and the financial community. These parties have convened under the auspices of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) during the past year to work on a concept known as “Age-Friendly Banking.” Members of this coalition include senior representatives from several of the nation’s largest banks including Bank of America and PNC Financial Group. Significantly, a number of government officials from the Northeastern United States also attended including: Delaware’s Secretary for HHS, Rita Landgraf; Pennsylvania’s Secretary for Department of Aging, Teresa Osbourne; and Laura Otterbourg of New Jersey’s Division of Aging Services. All of these distinguished members discussed their individual state’s efforts to address the needs of an aging population.
These needs have led banking members to begin discussing ideas such as simplified checking and savings accounts aimed at seniors and their caregivers. Members have also discussed new laws aimed at protecting seniors from being scammed by criminals parading as legitimate financial operators. They also begin talks on new financial protections that could help insulate seniors from financial shocks in the future. This is definitely an area of eldercare to watch as new, more effective legislation and bank practices will be introduced in the years to come.
It may take a village to raise a child, but it also takes a village to care for elderly dementia and Alzheimer’s patients. In the Netherlands, caregivers have reached a breakthrough with the development of Hogewey, a senior “village” that is only for patients with severe cognitive decline. Here, instead of warehousing seniors in nursing homes, seniors get their own monitored apartment. They can go out into the “village” where they are able to purchase food from the grocery store, treats from the ice cream shop, and send letters from a local postal office. The twist is that the shops are staffed with caregivers; and issues like money management and communication are mitigated by the nurturing staff. Seniors can’t leave, but the expansive nature of the facility makes it feel like they have the autonomy of living in their own town. The village has been positively life changing for its residents and their caregivers.
This sort of model for senior care, especially care of those with dementia or Alzheimer’s could be revolutionary if it makes its way over to the United States. With the sheer number of patients in the US with these chronic diseases, healthcare providers could learn a lot from the Hogewey project. Regardless of which of these models is implemented in the next few years, the secret to any effort’s success will be its ability to truly understand seniors. Something which, up to now, has been lacking from many health care outreach programs within the United States. We here at the Louisville Innovation Summit have great hopes for the future of empathy based care, and look forward to its continued development!
