New age for the elderly

The legendary poet Dylan Thomas, who wrote "Do not go gentle into that good night, old age should bum and rave," would probably be very proud of the baby boomers.

Thanks to the billions of dollars now being directed toward medical research by the anxious agers, the average American born at the turn of the new millennium will inherit a life expectancy nearly twice as long as that of a person bom in 1900. In fact, for the first time in history, notes Horace Deets, executive director of the American Association of Retired Persons, a given 50-year-old still has half of his or her adult years to live out.

With another one of the nearly 77 million baby boomers now turning 50 years old every seven seconds, the urgent question, says Deets, is: Now that we've added so many years to a life, how can we add more life to those years? It is a question that will be answered in large part by engineers.

With the ranks of those 65 years of age and older expected to swell from 33 million today to more than 80 million over the next four decades, there is a "natural marriage looming between technology and older people," says Robert B. Hudson, editor of the Public Policy and Aging Report. For decades, he says, American society has expected older people, who were relatively few in number, to adjust to an environment designed for younger people. But with the first of the baby boomers set to hit the senior discount stage of life in about a decade, Hudson says it is time to adjust the infrastructure of everyday life to meet the needs of graying citizens, who already make up one in every six Americans and before the coming century's end will account for one in every three.

Thanks to advances in nutrition and in the prevention and treatment of disease, most of us will remain much healthier and more active than senior citizens of the past. But even in the best case scenario, the natural aging process still causes changes that alter the way a person moves through life. Starting in our thirties, subtle but steady declines start to make a body weaker, perception less acute, and response times slower. That is why it is imperative, says Jeanette Takamura, head of the federal government's Administration on Aging, for the government to "encourage the development of an architecture for longevity," whether it be more accommodating traffic lights, remote communication systems for caregivers, or homes that 90-year-olds can more easily navigate.

It is not only the urgings of government leaders, but also the unprecedented purchasing power of the boomers that is helping to spawn the infant field of "gerontechnology," also known as "eldertech." Never has an aging population been so well educated, so wealthy, so eager to be active through the last days of life, and so willing to spend money on products and services to make that happen. Not only has the percentage of the elderly who are considered poor dropped from 30 percent to 10 percent over recent decades, but baby boomers are expected to inherit as much as $14 trillion, the largest transfer of wealth in history, according to WT economist Lester Thurow.

Automobile manufacturers are responding to the desires of older consumers with new features, like night vision enhancements, that make it a little less frightening for a driver with less-than-perfect vision to take to the road. The University of North Carolina boasts a "Universal Design Center," devoted to restructuring living spaces to make it easier for aging people to remain independent longer, "aging in place" at home rather than being institutionalized. And the Center for Assistive Technology at the University of Buffalo has developed dozens of products, from radios that turn on and off with the tilt of a head to coffee cups that beep when they are almost filled to the brim.

Engineers throughout the new gerontechnology field are considering not only the special needs of the elderly, but also those of the people who care for them. Today, more than seven million people act as informal caregivers to aging parents and relatives. Those figures will only mushroom, because the older a person gets, the more assistance he or she needs, and the numbers of the "oldest old"-those over 85-will quadruple over the next 50 years to reach nearly 20 million. That puts engineering innovations that will make it easier for the sandwich generation to care for their elders without losing control over their own lives. And with the combined earning power of caregivers and elders at $1.6 trillion, corporations such as Electronic Data Systems, Toyota, and Hartford Insurance are taldng notice.

But nowhere is the effort to engineer a better life for the second half of life more front and center than at the new Technology for Healthy Aging Laboratory, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Aimed at bringing together academics, government officials, private foundations, and industry leaders in partnerships to commercialize new innovations, the MIT Age Lab employs engineers, transportation specialists, and even physicians to brainstorm on improvements to all aspects of daily life.