For the entire overview regarding the MIT Agelab, link to their website at http://web.mit.edu/agelab/index.html
The Purpose
The AgeLab was established at MIT in 1999, as a partnership with industry and the aging community, to develop new technologies promoting healthy, independent living throughout the human lifespan.
Our research involves an array of disciplines including engineering, computer science, human factors, health and medical sciences, management, marketing, and the social and behavioral sciences.
All of our work is motivated by a shared belief that the appropriate use of technology, along with innovations in its delivery, can have a significant impact on the quality of life for older people, their families and caregivers.
The Approach
The AgeLab seeks to address these problems and opportunities by serving as a catalyst to ignite both technological and institutional change.
To achieve this, we work with our Laboratory Partners to:
- Speed the development of innovations in products and services by leveraging the wealth of existing and near-term methods and technologies in biomedical engineering, wireless communications, computer-human interaction, computer science, health sciences, industrial design, human factors, marketing and NASA space research to improve the lives of people today as well as in the future.
- Serve as catalyst and common ground for our Industry Partners to learn of new business opportunities and to forge strategic alliances with each other - igniting first-to-market products and services through small focused strategy sessions, introductions at MIT AgeLab events, market research and collaboration on intellectual property
- Spearhead policy strategies to remove barriers to rapid commercialization, availability, acceptance and affordability of technologies in industrialized and developing economies through agenda-setting policy research, events with industry and policy leaders, and continuing outreach
In all of its work, the AgeLab aims to serve as a global leader in technology and aging, a world-class center of excellence.
The Challenge
Over the last century, the average lifespan in the industrialized world has increased by nearly three decades. Developing countries are now seeing great growth in their aging population as well. But the natural aging process, and the onset of age-related diseases, often affect our capacity to live out that expanded lifespan with grace, independence and dignity. Consequently, for many, humankinds greatest success -- longer life has become its greatest challenge.
The next frontier in aging research is to develop the infrastructure to enable a new lifestyle of active and productive aging. Innovations in information technology, computation, communications, materials, engineering & design, behavioral economics, human factors, and a host of other fields already exist to address this challenge. Enabling business to bring those innovations to the global marketplace -- and understanding how they may change our thinking about everyday events such as driving, cleaning house, and shopping -- may be an even greater challenge than developing the inventions themselves.
Tapping technology to meet the needs of older adults is not new. There are countless families of "assistive technologies"-- even an emerging field of "gerontechnology"--and "universal design" theory to address the multiple use, access, and egress needs of those with physical disabilities. In general, however, these efforts are fragmented and address single physical aspects of living: a better bed for the bedroom, a better lift for the senior van, or more accessible appliances for the home.
We do not live in single environments. Life is made up of multiple and interrelated activities and of interdependent systems. Throughout life we work, we play, we communicate, we care, we learn, we move, and although it is crucial that we be able to function within a setting, it is the linkage among those activities that makes a quality life possible. An integrated infrastructure for independent aging should include a healthy home, productive living, personal communications, and lifelong transportation. As the baby boomers matured, the government built schools, constructed sidewalks and parks, and invested in health care to create an infrastructure to support their well-being. Today, the challenge for policymakers and industry is to continue that commitment: to fully leverage advances in information, communications, nanotechnology, sensors, advanced materials, lighting, and many other technologies to optimize existing public and private investments and to create new environments that respond to an aging society's needs. The AgeLab is committed to creating a seamless and integrated infrastructure that addresses:
- Healthy Home. Considerable research is being conducted to address future homes that may facilitate healthy aging, however, most choose to age-in-place. The challenge is to identify those technologies, products and services to be integrated into existing kitchens, bathrooms, living areas and wardrobes that might improve the capacity of older people to independently live at home as long as possible or assist caregivers in supporting older friends, parents and spouses. Wireless health monitoring and management, improved design, clothing to reduce injury and compensate for the natural aging process, technology-based services to aid with medical compliance or meal preparation are only a few of these innovations.
- Lifelong Transportation. Providing a continuum of transportation alternatives as we age, including the use of advanced electronics to enable older adults to drive as long as safely possible, and alternative transportation involving a new generation of vehicles, information systems and services.
- Productive Living. Healthy aging is more then the accumulation of years, it is the capacity to maintain a productive life. Productive living is enabled by inventing new approaches, services and devices to support lifelong learning, contributions through work and volunteerism, travel, recreation and entertainment.
- Personal Communications. Communications products and services customized for older adults, their caregivers and healthcare providers -- including wireless, broadband and satellite technologies, emergency services, coordinated transportation and access to a wide range of shopping, education, entertainment and related services that can be delivered through existing infrastructure or wireless systems
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