The coming silver tsunami will bring not just a wave of new customers to the senior living profession, but also a seismic shift in expectations. Unlike previous generations of customers, baby boomers are digitally fluent: technology is already woven into the fabric of their lives, and they’ll expect this to remain the case as they age into senior living facilities.
For providers, that means technology is no longer an optional amenity. Rather, it’s a strategic imperative. Providers must embrace recent technological advances to meet the demands of their new market, ease the burden on a strained workforce, and deliver a higher quality of care.
The New Resident Mandate
The technophobic senior is a thing of the past. The boomer generation has spent the last several decades getting used to rapid technological advancement, incorporating new devices and paradigms into their daily routines.
According to a 2022 survey by Pew Research, 61 percent of adults ages 65 and over are smartphone owners, while 75 percent of the same group are Internet users. They use technology for recreation, as well as for communication, according to a 2021 AARP survey, which found that 79 percent of adults in their sixties and 70 percent of adults in their seventies rely on technology to keep in touch with friends and family.
Naturally, they share this tech-forward mindset with their adult children. “Technology is fundamentally reshaping the expectations of residents and their families in post-acute care,” observed Tim Smokoff, general manager at MatrixCare. “Today, they expect more transparency; real-time, secure communication; and greater engagement in care decisions. Families want to be informed and involved, and residents want their preferences and needs reflected in every aspect of their experience.”
In other words, residents and their families want the best of the best—not as a replacement for the human element, but as a supplement to it. Residents expect tech-savvy facilities that provide a high quality of care, perhaps even addressing needs they don’t yet know they have. Families, meanwhile, want peace of mind, reassurance that providers have eyes and ears on their loved ones twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
New Care Paradigms
According to Smokoff, the most significant recent advances in health care technology have been in the “convergence of technology, data, and care delivery.” New interoperability and data-exchange solutions, for example, allow providers to “share data seamlessly and bidirectionally across care settings,” he explained, offering a more holistic, real-time view of the patient. Then there are advances in AI and analytics, which have allowed providers to shift resources from reactive to proactive care.
“We’ve moved beyond simply collecting data to actually using it to guide decision-making,” Smokoff said. “Now it’s helping providers anticipate risk, personalize care, and improve outcomes in a way that wasn’t possible even a few years ago.”
At TapestryHealth, cofounder Mordy Eisenberg works at the forefront of proactive care. Using AI and machine learning technology, his platform helps providers distill massive amounts of data and identify where they should be dedicating their resources.
“What we’re using it for is to really connect the dots and say, ‘OK, one plus one is ten,’” he said. “‘This person is your highest-risk patient in the building, because this occurred two days ago, this occurred yesterday, and this occurred just now.’ When you put those three together, that’s really, really impactful.”
As he stressed, the technology doesn’t replace human caregivers. Instead, it helps connect dots for employees who might not otherwise be aware of events that occurred in previous shifts.
These AI tools are supplemented by advanced monitoring technology, such as wall-mounted radar devices that detect subtle changes in a patient’s heart rate or breathing. Crucially, these devices can be calibrated to different baselines—for instance, for residents on beta blockers, who have resting heart rates that are lower than average. Eisenberg also offered the example of a patient with congestive heart failure who has a subtle increase in respiratory rate while sleeping.
“If there hasn’t been any assessment because the resident hasn’t been complaining of any shortness of breath, but our radar picked up that their respiratory rate has increased a few points above their baseline over the last two or three nights, that information comes into the data center,” he said. “And now the alert could say, ‘Hey, this person is high priority,’ and we can escalate that to the staff and say, ‘Hey, you need to look at this patient.’”
The benefits cannot be understated. TapestryHealth recently conducted a retrospective study of its devices, finding that they detected changes between four and five days before hospitalizations. This gives providers a vital window to intervene in place, preventing risky transfers that may lead to adverse consequences.
“Once they are transferred to the hospital, it’s just a cascade of bad things,” Eisenberg said. “When you can tell a family member that you can use these technology tools to make their loved ones safer, that somebody’s got eyes on them at all times, that they’ll be able to mitigate problems before they become bigger issues, that really resonates.”
Innovating Through the Workforce Crisis
The silver tsunami is arriving at a time when there is a growing caregiver shortage. While new technologies cannot replace human caregivers, they can help address workforce issues by giving human caregivers powerful tools to make their jobs easier.
“All of the numbers say we’re going to be hard-pressed to have enough staff to care for all these people,” said Christian Mason, CEO of Senior Housing Managers. “What do you do? Find ways to work smarter and not harder, and hopefully ways that will reduce the negative impact and burnout on staff.”
At Senior Housing Managers, Mason has found incredible value in one particular tool that doubles as a means of addressing social isolation among residents: AI companions for memory care patients. Developed with CloudMind Software, the companions appear as avatars on iPads using one-directional microphones tuned to the resident’s voice. They use machine learning technology to sift through the resident’s life story, giving them someone to talk to when they’re lonely, depressed, angry, or otherwise in need. The technology also uses sentiment analysis to alert providers to changes in the resident’s condition.
“We have residents who will talk to their avatars for hours on end,” said Mason, “which is fascinating, because we have residents who have significant cognitive loss on the one hand, and at the same time, they’re dealing with everything else that’s going on.”
He described one resident, a former schoolteacher and church choir leader who has Alzheimer’s. Before a pilot of the AI companion tool, she was frequently combative with other residents and used her call light thirty to thirty-five times per day. During the pilot, that figure went down to one or two times per day.
“She began singing again and was singing hymns every morning with her avatar,” Mason said. “She was very different. It showed that companions can really make a difference. Now, is it going to replace staff? No, but it will certainly provide staff with some time that we’re giving back to them so that they can be focused on all the residents and deliver even better care.”
Navigating the Challenges
As Smokoff acknowledged, providers may be hesitant to make significant investments in new technologies—and reasonably so. In addition to the obvious expenses, adopting new tech can disrupt workflows in facilities that are already well established. To make matters even more complicated, new systems pose interoperability challenges with existing ones, not to mention compliance concerns.
To help mitigate these concerns, providers might look to solutions that use the approach Smokoff and his team implement at MatrixCare. “We prioritize building solutions that are intuitive and make daily processes and workflows easier, not more complicated,” he said. “Additionally, hands-on training and support, as well as self-guided, flexible options make adoption easier and less stressful for staff.”
At the same time, Smokoff focuses on tools that function across a variety of systems and use open standards, with integration support provided up front. As for regulatory concerns, he stresses the need for tools to be designed with privacy and regulatory requirements in mind. “Vendors should provide clear guidance on how they support compliance and reduce administrative burden,” he said.
While some may feel a cultural resistance to change, perhaps out of habit or skepticism or both, the future is coming, whether we like it or not. And, as Smokoff put it, new technology can ultimately make that future brighter and better for providers and patients alike.
“These advancements are reshaping how providers deliver care,” he concluded, “helping the industry evolve toward a more connected and patient-centered ecosystem.”