The Digital Medicine Society (DiME), in collaboration with the Consumer Technology Association and a coalition of industry partners, launched a new initiative to build a digital blueprint for tech-enabled aging in place for older seniors.
The initiative is a multi-stakeholder project to deliver an evidence-based, interoperable plan for safe, affordable aging at home aligned with federal technology priorities, according to Jennifer Goldsack, CEO of DiMe. It marks the second major project undertaken by the Connected Health Collaborative (CHcc), which is led by DiMe with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) as a hosting partner. CHcc also works in coordination with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to align efforts with national regulatory and interoperability priorities, Goldsack said.
Every day, 10,000 Americans turn 65. By 2030, one in five U.S. residents will be senior citizens. Surveys have shown that the vast majority of Americans age 50-plus would like to live in their current home (75%) and community (73%) for as long as possible. An AARP survey shows that 89% of older adults rank aging in place as important, but many individuals face barriers ranging from affordability and safety to care coordination and technology access. Technology to support aging at home needs to be reliable, easy to use, accurate and affordable, experts say.
While there have been efforts to support older seniors at home with "smart home" technology tools, remote monitoring, fall detection tech and virtual care, those technologies are often not integrated and most homes lack the infrastructure to support 'AgeTech,'" Goldstack told Fierce Healthcare in an interview.
She asserts the timing is right to make impactful advances for tech-enabled aging at home with data infrastructure improvements, conversations around payment mechanisms and commitments from the federal government to support digital tools and data to support Medicare beneficiaries.
“We are uniting the full ecosystem of payers, providers, innovators and advocates to replace fragmented approaches with an actionable, evidence-based blueprint for scaling connected health solutions that are safe, affordable and sustainable, ensuring every older adult has the chance to age where they choose with safety, dignity and connection," Goldsack said.
Participating partners in the initiative include home health care companies Bayada Home Health Care and Enhabit Home Health & Hospice, medical equipment and home-care infrastructure companies AdaptHealth and Verizon, electronic health record giant Epic Systems, data integration company Validic and health systems and academic medical centers such as Harvard University, Healthy Home Lab at the University of Pittsburgh and UMass Memorial Health.
Other partners include health monitoring company Empatica, brain health tech company Linus Health, connected health company Withings, Xandar Kardian, a company that developed radar-based monitoring solutions, health tech companies Monovo and ProtoKinetics, as well as the National Alliance for Care at Home, Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH), PATHS, Telecom Design, Thrive Center and TMF Health Quality Institute.
“This collaboration is an important step toward creating a connected care experience that gives older adults and their families better options,” Philip Parks, Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at AdaptHealth, said in a statement. “By combining the data, people, services, support and care within a framework, we can turn vision into practical, scalable solutions that make aging at home and communities both safe and realistic for everyone.”
The initiative will focus on defining the infrastructure and incentives needed to scale by establishing foundational systems, policy frameworks and payment models to make technology-enabled aging in place financially and operationally sustainable. Participating organizations will also aim to implement evidence-based best practices, using proven protocols and standards to deploy connected health solutions that improve safety, independence and quality of life, according to DiMe. And the initiative will work to accelerate reimbursement and quantify ROI by building the business case for AgeTech adoption with clear evidence of cost savings, clinical outcomes and value.
This new initiative also aligns with federal priorities within the Trump administration to advance the use of digital tools and data to strengthen care for Medicare beneficiaries, Goldsack noted.
In May, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy/Office of the National Coordinator of Health IT (ASTP/ONC) put out a Request for Information seeking public comment on how to ease data exchange among the healthcare ecosystem for patients, providers, payers, vendors and value-based care organizations.
Two months later, CMS launched its Health Technology Ecosystem Initiative and Interoperability Pledge, asking organizations to align around shared principles for connected, patient-centered care. CMS will create an app store of vetted digital health solutions, require apps to use modern identity solutions and integrate AI chatbots to provide beneficiaries with information about healthcare access, federal leaders said.
The new DiMe initiative represents a critical step toward making those ambitions a reality, Goldsack noted. The collaboration brings together the partners, evidence and infrastructure needed to achieve what federal leaders have envisioned: coordinated, technology-enabled care that allows older adults to age safely and independently at home, she said.
"The momentum behind this is absolutely enormous," Goldsack said. "I think this project is going to be particularly powerful is because it's going to connect the dots from where we are today to the future, defined and incentivized by the administration."
The new initiative follows on the heels of the Connected Health Collaborative's initial work to provide a blueprint for tech-enabled hospital-at-home services.
"What we always had in mind when we did our hospital-at-home work was really creating an environment where technologies could be used to have the greatest impact on outcomes, and also access," Goldsack said. "We focused on hospital-at-home because there was a reimbursable pathway, and also because that would create the initial infrastructure for high-acuity care at home. Having done the work around the high-acuity care in the home, we wanted to think about, 'How do we now start to extend that to the entire lived experience and patient journey of older individuals in America?"
She added, "You don't suddenly turn on a switch and you're a patient, and then you turn it off again when you're discharged from the hospital, whether that's a brick-and-mortar facility or whether it's hospital-at-home. If we really want to meet the needs of older Americans to stay in their homes and move towards a future state of caring for all the people that's actually accessible and affordable, we have to create an infrastructure where the support is always there."
To support tech-enabled aging in place, there is a need to think through issues such as tech infrastructure gaps and policy and reimbursement models, Goldsack noted.
"We need to ensure there's actually ecosystem alignment among all of the different stakeholders, from the home healthcare providers to the folks who are providing durable medical equipment to the payers who are doing care optimization. How do we define that tech stack and that integration roadmap?" she said.
"This effort has really accelerated by the activities of the administration around the healthcare ecosystem, the pledges, the intentionality and the clear signals that the government is currently putting out. They believe that flows of data and digitally-enabled care are a sustainable pathway to the future of how we care for Medicare beneficiaries," she said.
Work to support digital health for aging seniors could also have a ripple effect for the broader population, Goldsack said. This initiative could kickstart efforts to think through supporting health and wellness, more personalized care and "care that moves upstream" from the traditional model where providers care for patients who are already sick, she noted.
"I think all of that becomes possible when we start to articulate the data that's important for clinical-decision making, how we think about payment and reimbursement models and how we think about getting signals from individuals during their everyday lives in order to keep them out of the hospital, out of the clinic and healthy," she added.
The initiative is the next major step advancing DiMe’s Healthcare 2030 vision to advance digital health. Through this effort, DiMe plans to deliver a suite of practical resources, including playbooks, funding and policy recommendations, and real-world case studies.