Frequently Asked Questions

What is the purpose of the Center for Technology and Aging?

The Center exists to advance the adoption of technologies that enhance home and community-based care for older adults, enabling them to live healthier, safer and more independent lives outside of traditional health care settings.

Substantial leaps in the use of health information and care-related technologies are desperately needed to support older Americans and those with chronic conditions. Without widespread adoption of new approaches and tools for managing chronic care, the U.S. will never get control of burgeoning health care costs, let alone improve a health system that unnecessarily burdens patients, caregivers and families in their efforts to care for seniors.

Spending on chronic care accounts for 75% of the nations’ health care budget¹. Clearly, this is the population that must be targeted for better, more effective and more efficient care through the use of innovative, proven technologies.

How is the Center funded?

The Center is supported through a grant of $5 million from The SCAN Foundation (www.scanfoundation.org) as part of the foundation’s mission to spur research and reform about critical healthcare issues facing America’s growing senior population. Based in Long Beach, California, SCAN is an independent nonprofit foundation dedicated to advancing the development of a sustainable continuum of quality care for seniors that integrates medical treatment and human services in the settings most appropriate to their needs with the greatest likelihood of a healthy, independent life.

What problem is the Center is trying to solve?

While the number of beneficial technologies has been increasing, their diffusion has been limited. This is due to several factors, including: lack of evidence of the effectiveness of some technologies, inadequately prepared and trained caregivers, limited knowledge among providers of how beneficial technologies can be best applied, technology vendor interest in sales rather than systematic diffusion of beneficial technology, inadequate reimbursement, lack of consumer involvement, and costs associated with implementing transformative technologies.

How does the Center hope to do to solve this problem?

The Center has several approaches to expanding the adoption of technology innovations: identifying and promoting best practices in diffusion, serving as a national resource for the dissemination of successful diffusion strategies, evaluating diffusion strategies, and promoting national policy in support of new approaches to quality of care for seniors.

What exactly are “beneficial technologies”?

Beneficial technologies help older adults, and their caregivers, manage chronic disease while enabling individuals to live more independently in their own community. Characteristics of a beneficial technology are:

• Care information and knowledge can be delivered wherever and whenever it is needed
• Chronic disease is managed more effectively
• Caregivers’ capacity and productivity is increased
• Human errors and their cost is reduced
• Functional independence of older adults is promoted
• Home and community-based care is supported and effective

Why has technology become so important to health care?

Technology enables physicians, nurses and other caregivers to provide better quality care. Technology does not replace hands-on caring, but improves care through:

• Earlier treatment: allowing for preventive and more effective treatment interventions.
• Personalization: treatment that incorporates a patient’s unique disease or genetic characteristics.
• Less invasive techniques: diagnosis and treatment that expands treatment and recovery options.
• Delivery in any setting at any time: care becomes ubiquitous through delivery in any setting – clinical, home, work or community at any time.
• More connections and better coordination: care is supported by the confidential flow of information among providers, patients, and families.
• Involvement of more care givers: Downshifting from reliance on only the highest skilled providers by engaging and preparing appropriate use of lower-cost non-licensed workers, families, and patients themselves.

What specific technologies will the Center be examining and supporting?

The seven technology focus areas for the Center are:

Medication Optimization - technologies designed to help manage medication information, dispensing, adherence, and tracking.

Remote Patient Monitoring - technologies designed to manage and monitor a range of health conditions.

Assistive Technologies - devices and equipment that help individuals perform a task or prevent injury.

Remote Training and Supervision - technologies used to train and supervise health and long-term care workers, and the potential for continuing education and quality assurance.

Disease Management - patient-centric, coordinated care processes for patients with chronic conditions and conditions that have a significant self-care component.

Cognitive Fitness and Assessment - technologies that measure cognition or include cognitive challenge regimens.

Social Networking – technologies that enable the building of communities of interest that help older adults communicate, organize, and share with other older adults and care providers.

Please see the July 2009 Briefing Paper called Technologies to Help Older Adults Maintain Independence: Advancing Technology Adoption for a discussion of each key technology area, including an overview, review of current applications, and an assessment of future opportunities. The first round of Center grants focuses on Medication Optimization.

Will the Center’s work differ from other organizations?

The Center is the only organization in California – or nationally – focused solely on promoting and enabling widespread adoption of proven technologies that offer dramatic improvement in the efficiency of care to the elderly, while supporting their right to maintain control of their lives and remain as independent as possible in their own communities.

No other organization is focused primarily on speeding the adoption, expansion and sustainability of these transformative technologies.

Can you quantify the impact on health care quality and costs that widespread adoption of technologies will have?

If proven technologies were widely adopted – and reimbursed by the government and private insurance companies – savings would be in the hundreds of billions. For example, there is potential annual savings of $400 billion to the U.S. health care system if chronic conditions and post hospitalization care were to be managed by involved consumers in their homes.²

Another example comes from a study of remote physiological monitoring for congestive heart failure that demonstrated the potential for annual national cost savings of up to $6.4 billion by reducing hospital readmissions.³

What organizations are eligible for grants and what types of projects will you fund?

The Center’s policy, research and grant work will test and evaluate diffusion strategies and best practices for using innovative technologies to care for older adults. The Center will also develop policy positions and technical assistance tools that help health care stakeholders speed the adoption of these technologies.

Organizations eligible for grant funding from the Center will be health and social service organizations with a very high probability of successfully implementing technology diffusion strategies. These might include integrated health plans, home care agencies, provider organizations such as physician groups, provider organizations in the aging network, among others.

Are public and private health insurance reimbursement policies barriers to adoption of appropriate technologies? How can these be overcome?

There are a variety of barriers to widespread adoption of helpful technologies – provider knowledge, geographic access, consumer acceptance, a qualified workforce – but financial incentives and reimbursement polices are among the most significant.

Influencing policy that leads to progressive reimbursement policies is an important Center goal. We will advance policy recommendations that inform state and federal agencies, legislative bodies, associations and provider groups. The Center will focus on collaborating with organizations that already have a strong policy orientation.