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Will Robots Assist With Elderly Care?

admin August 16th, 2010

Last week I blogged about Canada needing to improve elderly care with the aging population. Imagine my pleasant surprise when I read The Globe and Mail reporting on the creation of a robot Brian at the University of Toronto’s Department of Mechanical Engineering!
 
Brian is a socially interactive robot, a prototype in development at the University’s autonomous systems and biomechatronics lab.  The 4-foot-6, 200-pound machine may one day assist the elderly in long-term-care facilities by interacting with residents, playing games and reminding those with cognitive impairments to perform daily tasks, such as brushing their teeth. Partnering with the U of T is The Baycrest health-sciences centre in Toronto.
 
With projections showing that seniors will account for 23 to 25 percent of the total population by 2036, nearly double the 13.9 percent in 2009, Brian was designed to take the strain off healthcare workers in hospitals and live-in facilities and, ideally, help seniors stay in their own homes longer by monitoring the environment and providing assistance along with healthcare professionals.
 
Not a bad solution, except that robots do not have emotions! But even this can be fixed. With affect-recognition software, this robot will then be able to use tone and speech pacing to determine a person’s mood and respond accordingly to help with cognitive cues and emotional responses. Brian can be sad or happy!
While the memory game could be stimulating for the aging mind and Brian’s appointment reminders could replace the use of written notes for patients with early cognitive impairments, patients with dementia or severe Alzheimer’s require human care. Perhaps a combination of robotic innovation with the advance planning of improving long-term care services will eventually help this country’s healthcare system cope with an aging population.

Extreme Sports for Boomers

Lina Ko June 29th, 2010

I’ve just returned from a week’s vacation in London, U.K., and had a brief celebrity encounter with the actor Tim Robbins in my hotel’s fitness centre. While I was busy on my morning treadmill routine and trying at pains to figure out the conversion from kilometres to miles (obviously I’m too used to the U.S. system at my gym back home even though the rest of Canada has adopted the metric system), Robbins was with the hotel’s personal trainer loudly moaning in pain from his ‘torture master’ while stretching his chest on another machine.

Tim Robbins’s ‘no pain, no gain’ attitude led me to conclude that whatever the motive, boomers still need to accept that they are getting older and need to approach certain activities with caution. While Robbins might be motivated by his professional desire to look trim and fit for the big screen, most boomers want to stay physically active to enjoy life.

According to the Canwest News Service, boomers like to take on extreme activities like whitewater rafting and rock-climbing; fast-paced sports like hockey; and even bungee jumping. Tennis and golf remain popular sports for boomers as well. Getting a good trainer to let them show you the right and wrong way to do something is probably the best approach.  According to physical therapists, middle-aged people who want to try an extreme sport should work their way up to it. They advise that instead of focusing on one extreme activity, boomers should do a combination of things. Sticking to one strenuous sport continuously can cause wear and tear over time.

Like food and alcohol, everything in moderation would be key to physical exercise too.  High-impact activities should only be tried once and according to experts, bungee jumping is not good for people of any age and once is quite enough to experience the thrill of your lifetime. If there are signs of extreme soreness and stiffness that exceed beyond the normal 48 hours, professional help should be sought. So long as they take the necessary precautions, baby boomers can enjoy the rush of extreme sports without seriously harming their bodies.

Doomsayers Challenged On Predicting Aging Population Crisis

admin May 31st, 2010

With Statistics Canada’s announcement last week that Canada is turning grey, a lot of doomsayers are predicting that our pension and healthcare system are in danger because of the huge burden of the boomer (soon-to-be-senior) population. StatsCan says that by 2036, about 23 to 25 percent of the population will be composed of Canadians who are 65 or older. If current trends continue, StatsCan expects the number of seniors between 2015 and 2021 to be greater than the number who are 14 or under.

A lot of tough questions are immediately being asked of such a demographic situation – will young, working Canadians be prepared to pay more taxes to cover the seniors’ health bills or will they look for alternative methods of ensuring that everyone gets the medical care they need? Also, will a relatively small percentage of young, working Canadians be willing to support the various pension plans that the boomers have counted on? Already some of the country’s leading economists are toying with the idea that perhaps the government should make affluent seniors pay for their drug costs and the healthcare system will only subsidize the needy seniors.

Contrary to what the doomsayers said, Moses Znaimer, President of the Canadian Association for Retired People (CARP), and publisher of Zoomer Magazine, expressed through an op-ed in the Toronto Star that the aging population is not quite the crisis that pessimists consider it to be. According to Znaimer, in 2009, Canadians 45-plus numbered approximately 14 million or about 42 percent of the total population of 34 million. These millions of Canadians made up 53 percent of all tax-filers. He pointed out that most retirees and pensioners continue to pay tax. By the year 2031, it’s projected that there will be about 19 million Canadians aged 45 and older, or 49 percent of a total projected population of 39 million. Boomers at that point will comprise 63 percent of all Canadian tax-filers.

Znaimer argued that unless boomers, who will turn seniors by that time, receive tax refunds, the model suggests that they will be paying for the lion’s share of government expenditures in 2031, but they are still barely half of the population. This assumption led to his conclusion that not only will boomers be paying for themselves, covering their own costs, but they might well be helping cover healthcare costs for the next population waves as well.

While the healthcare cost is definitely heavier for seniors, the degree by which it’s heavier appears to be far smaller than predictions. According to the latest StatsCan reports, 90 percent of Canadians aged 65-plus have visited a doctor ‘in the past 12 months.’ This may seem high until you consider that 82.8 percent of Canadians aged 45 to 64 have also seen doctors in the past year; not to mention 80 percent of 35- to 44-year-olds; 78.2 percent of 15- to 19-year-olds; and, at least 85 percent of all children under 12. Moreover, the majority of older Canadians today are healthy, thanks to better fitness, diet, nutrition and other wellness practices. Most debilitating conditions and serious illnesses, according to Znaimer, don’t occur until after the age of 80 and, increasingly, not till after 85. So the aging population crisis is not as serious as what the rest of the media are predicting.

One cannot but agree that so long as we boomers continue to stay active and do our best to enjoy life with a positive attitude, we’ll be that way for the lion’s share of our aging years and not become a burden for the rest of the society.

Boomers Remain Generous to Charities

Lina Ko November 12th, 2009

In spite of a tough economic climate, most Canadian boomers are still giving generously when it comes to charitable donations of money and time. According to a new survey by the BMO Retirement Institute, an overwhelming majority of Canadians open their wallets to charities and other philanthropic causes, with an 84 percent donor rate in 2007 resulting in more than $10 billion. This represents a 12 percent increase or $1.1 billion over figures from 2004.

The report also indicated that Canadians’ generosity went beyond financial donations in 2007 as well, with 2.1 billion hours of volunteered time to charities – equating more than a million full-time jobs.

According to the BMO report, titled The Evolution of Giving: From Charity to Philanthropy, boomers also have lofty charitable goals for the next five years, with 82 percent saying they intend to at least maintain their current contribution rates.

I’ve blogged before on the subject of boomers wanting to give back to the community as they mature. Charitable causes might just continue to be recession-proof because of the boomers’ contributions!

Former Rock Chick Living the Good Life

Lina Ko October 26th, 2009

I’m tired of talking about the doom and gloom news on this blog. So, for a change, I’ll mention another boomer woman whose glorious past and a divorce 10 years ago didn’t stop her from further developing herself.

I read with interest in Hello! Canada how Jerry Hall, a former model and ex-wife of Mick Jagger, has been staying in the same house in Richmond, U.K., where she raised her four kids. At 53, the statuesque Texan looks amazing. She appeared on the London stage in Calendar Girls with critical acclaim (not just on her naked body!) and contintues to be involved with various charities and campaigns. She has also completed a university degree, writes poetry and is planning to do a Cordon Bleu cooking course. On top of all these, she has also got her captain’s licence for boat driving.

With no plastic surgery (she might have Botox here and there) and an accomplished life, this former rock chick is single but happy. She also told the publication that she would not go out with a rock star again. I never thought Jerry Hall was attractive in her younger days, but she is increasingly beautiful every time when I saw her on TV or read about her in a magazine. Maybe as she said, happiness and self-accomplishment drive away wrinkles.

Demand for Physiotherapy on the Rise

Lina Ko October 16th, 2009

According to The Ottawa Citizen, the practice of physiotherapy is on the rise – up in the last decade by 100 percent – because we have an aging population that wants to stay active. An epidemic of physical fitness is breaking out among the 50-plus generation. Suddenly there are Canadians who at 50 are fitter than they have been in their adult lives. They are running marathons even after having heart attacks. They are training five days a week. Pilates and yoga classes are thick with them. Canada had 2,000 athletes in the recent World Masters Games in Australia, the most of any of the 95 visiting countries. This surge of exercise is a phenomenon of baby boomers who wish to live forever, or at least to live as if they were young.

Scientists say health-conscious boomers may be right. Exercise slows the rate of muscle loss, joint stiffening and artery hardening. It reduces the risk of glaucoma. Even elderly couch potatoes who take up exercise in their 80s can live healthier and longer lives.

To keep the aging population active, there is a lot of demand for physiotherapy. In 1999, there were 2,500 members of the Order of Physiotherapists, the professional order. Now there are more than 6,000 members. Each year, about 155 physiotherapists graduate from universities, but by 2012-13, with the newly created masters program, 260 expect to graduate annually. Physiotherapists are trained to manage and prevent many of the physical problems caused by illness, sport- and work-related injuries and aging.

Some physiotherapy clinics are smart enough to incorporate the fitness component.  The body wears down over time, and sometimes exercising incorrectly can flare up a previous injury or bring on new ones. An active lifestyle is becoming more the norm than the exception. But with that, comes the cost of correcting and fixing injuries due to the overzealousness of keeping fit.

Mainstream Media Still Has A Role

admin May 6th, 2009

According to The Edmonton Journal, there’s still life to the mainstream media in spite of the omnipotence of new media. Research has indicated that new technology does not replace existing technology – it actually seems to stimulate its growth. In fact, Statistics Canada’s 2006 report – Our Lives in Digital Times – demonstrated this reality.

For example, the office computer was supposed to create the paperless office; instead, office paper consumption has doubled in the past 20 years. Email was supposed to replace snail mail, but the amount of mail going through Canada Post has increased slightly. Internet sales have increased, but so has the overall square footage of retail and the number of retail stores. Cell phones are everywhere, but the number of land-line telephones installed has doubled in the past 20 years.

Part of the ‘new technology is better than old technology’ argument is attributed to youth, but even the young are using both quite comfortably. By the same token, boomers are also using both. It’s long been a myth that boomers are not tech-savvy – in fact, they use new media as often as they rely on traditional media.

Yes, daily newspapers and television are facing troubles with declining advertising. However, new media are facing the same trouble. As recently reported in the National Post, YouTube is facing a $400-million loss, and Yahoo continues to struggle financially, as banner ads in the new media decline as much as in traditional advertising.

With the coming retirement or ‘reinvention’ of the biggest demographic in history – the baby boomers – it’s logical to predict a new golden age for newspapers and other mainstream media, such as magazines. At the same time, new media will also continue to appeal to this demographic if they know how to target them.