I’ve had a number of long and deep discussions with people about seniors and their adoption of technology to deal with their health. So, I was really hit by this tweet I saw a few months ago about Seniors and their access to wifi:
Wow! "62% of Americans over 65 have no WiFi" @WIREDINSIDERUK @CiscoUKI #WiredHealth #Wearables
— Elin Silveous (@ElinSilveous) April 29, 2014
I imagine that some would argue that many seniors don’t need wifi since they’re just going to use the internet on their phone. This is a fair point that’s worthy of deeper consideration and understanding. However, I find really interesting that so many seniors don’t have Wifi. I’ll be watching to see how this changes over time.
I guess the key healthcare question is: How important will wifi be to the future of healthcare?
While I love what’s happening in the mobile space, our data plans aren’t ready for what we can accomplish on wifi. I don’t see them getting there for a while either. Plus, our mobile phones become even more powerful when they’re connected to wifi. Kind of reminds me of the difference between when I paid for long distance by the minute versus our current unlimited long distance plan. That’s the difference between mobile data and wifi.
Of course, every good senior healthcare technology aficionado will tell you that in many cases the senior doesn’t need to have internet or be tech savvy. The seniors aren’t the ones that will use the technology. It’s the caregivers that are going to use the technology and you can be sure to a large majority of them have wifi.
