Design for living, not aging: Three take-aways for creating better health and wellness strategies

A recent event held at Fuse by Cardinal Health, the company's innovation center, put a spotlight on older adults and their caregivers—and the need for greater empathy when creating solutions for their healthcare.

The U.S. population is aging by the day. This rising tide of older adults is already impacting healthcare. Organizations creating solutions that address the needs of seniors may wish to rethink their approach to this work.

Those were just a few of the important points that were made at a recent event hosted by Fuse by Cardinal Health. The event, “Design for Living, Not Aging,” was held at the Fuse innovation center in Dublin, Ohio, and was intended to create a dialogue around using innovation to help older adults live their best lives.

“We brought 125 healthcare industry experts together to explore ways to create health and wellness strategies for the growing aging population,” said Fuse communications manager Jessie Olesnanik. “We wanted to adress both the clinical and personal sides of care in this area.”

With roughly 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 every day, and the population of older adults expected to nearly double in the next 30 years, there is mounting pressure on healthcare organizations to develop solutions to facilitate aging at home. Unpaid family caregivers are already stretched thin, and their professional counterparts are in short supply.

One question across the industry—whether it's from health systems, retail pharmacists or health insurers—is how new technologies can help fill this gap. But even more important, according to the event’s speakers, is to ensure any innovations that are on the table have been designed with the human side of aging in mind.

The event's keynote speaker, Silvia Vergani, design director at IDEO Palo Alto, drove this point home in her remarks on “Designing Human-Centered Solutions for the Aging Market.”

After she finished, moderator Brad Cochran, vice president of Alternate Care at Cardinal Health, opened the conversation to the room's four other design and aging experts from IDEO, Mosaic Design Studio, Brookdale Senior Living, and Ohio Health (see photo caption for more details).

Here are three key takeaways from the event.

Those in attendance were from all over the healthcare spectrum and came with an eclectic range of perspectives. One thing everyone had in common, however, was personal experience with aging itself. “It's easy to forget that aging touches all of us,” noted Fuse director of innovation solutions Tony Matessa, who served as the event's MC.

“Everyone had a story related to the topic before they had a story related to their work.” That drove home an important message, Matessa said. “We need to humanize our innovations. We're designing solutions for real people with real lives.”