Tiffany Robinson (00:02.976)
Today, we're joined by Nancy Griffin, founder of Glowing Older, a podcast and platform dedicated to re-imagining the aging experience. Nancy is a nationally recognized voice on aging and supporting older adults. Today, we'll explore how age tech is reshaping caregiving, making it possible for older adults to live independently and for caregivers to feel more supported in their roles. Nancy, welcome to the podcast.

Nancy Griffin (00:30.277)
Thank you so much for having me, Tiffany. I'm delighted to be here.

Tiffany Robinson (00:33.916)
Awesome. Before we dive in, can you share a little about your background and what inspired you to launch Glowing Older?

Nancy Griffin (00:42.721)
Absolutely. Briefly, I started at Cornell Hotel School in a graduate program in the mid 90s. And for 30 years, my career was in spa and wellness. And I'm sure you're all familiar with what happened in March 2020 when basically the world changed with COVID and all the spas shut down and I had a lot of free time on my hands.

And I was fascinated with how wellness was encroaching into senior living and home care.

And so I thought the best way for me to learn about the industry would be to start interviewing experts. So we've interviewed, we've had, we're in our 23rd season of the Going Older podcast. We've interviewed about 215 different experts, authors, developers. And of course, you guys are one of those experts. We need to get you on my show soon. But that's how I got started in this. And of course, it's a very fascinating and growing industry as 11,000.

people turn 65 every day in this country.

Tiffany Robinson (01:48.254)
would love to join you on your podcast. And I love how you're taking wellness and aging and putting that together and saying, what are we looking at here? So today, we're going to talk about technology. And so technology isn't replacing caregivers, but it is transforming how we support older adults every day. Let's start with what's possible now, can you share a little bit about maybe what excites you most about age tech innovations that are available right now?

Nancy Griffin (02:17.089)
Absolutely. I have to say, Tiffany, I'm slightly intimidated by you guys because you vet amazing technologies yourself and make them available on the website. There's a lot of different subscriptions and different vetting of technologies. But I'll just back up for a minute and define for your listeners that really aren't familiar with what Agetech is, that the Agetech Connect Group out of Atlanta defines Agetech as any tech or tech

enabled service that helps people have a better experience of aging.

I like to say though that age tech is good for all ages and it's a big pie with many slices. So there's many different experts in addition to Comfort for Care. In the age tech space, would say AARP and their age tech collaborative is one of the biggest. We're part of their business services of the age tech collaborative and they have a startup division, many enterprises that are

part of that. But they have different categories for age tech and they include health and wellness, social engagement, financial wellness, caregiving, smart living, and assistive tech. And most people think of age tech as just for maybe senior living or home care, which is what your expertise is in, and health care.

But H-Tech spans a lot of different angles and it helps a lot of different people, especially caregivers, which as you know, I don't need to tell you, we have a caregiving crisis in our country. So I would say that caregiving is the biggest slice of the pie in that it's probably our biggest issue with a growing population and less younger people to care for us.

Nancy Griffin (04:18.521)
we are in dire need of caregiving solutions. So I would have to say that in terms of age tech, some of the more exciting things are in the caregiving space and I would highly recommend that.

to your website to look at some of the technologies you have available. But what's also exciting to me are some of the other areas in travel and tourism, transportation, retail, media, and fintech, which is financial services. And they're not always for the end consumer. So I don't know if you want to dig into specific companies at this point or if you want to dig into that later.

Tiffany Robinson (04:58.996)
Yeah, just to kind of start thinking about what is a check? What's available? What things are available at our fingertips that can help us?

Nancy Griffin (05:08.961)
Exactly. Well, I think one of the things that you talk about a lot on your website is as the idea of remote

even if an adult child lives down the street from their parent, they don't really know what's going on inside the home. So.

Originally, the idea of having cameras on someone was not, for privacy issues, very exciting to the older adult. They're like, I don't want to be watched. So there's technologies today, and I know you recommend one, that uses radar sensors. So for example, if your older adult happens to have a dog,

You can have a sensor on the door where they let that dog out and know whether they're letting the dog out in the morning, they're letting their dog out.

And I think one of the exciting things about AI is that it's predictive behavior. So if the AI can determine patterns of behavior and then those patterns change, then you know something's off. So what's really great about some of the new technologies is instead of talking about fault detection,

Nancy Griffin (06:26.571)
which is of course after someone falls. We're talking now about fall prevention. So did the person's gait change? Did their behavior change? And you may be able to prevent that fall before it happens. And that's really a game changer.

Tiffany Robinson (06:44.35)
I absolutely agree. So just to share a little bit about what we're doing at Comfort Care and at your side. So first of all, we're always thinking about promoting health and independence. And the best way to do this, in my opinion, is to be proactive, have a plan put together. So we offer an enhanced service called Connected Care. And so this can blend technology with the traditional caregiving services. Connected Care is a remote patient monitoring system.

And it can be used to detect falls. It can also be used to detect wellness, which is what you were getting on there. So there's no wearables or cameras, right? That makes people sometimes feel uncomfortable or it makes me feel like maybe my independence is being taken away. Instead, we have these 4D radar enabled sensors that are in the home. They're discreet, but they can detect a fall. But in addition to that, they can also detect change in the day-to-day routine, which

could be early signs of decline. And they're able to report this to the medical professionals and family. So they're knowing right away, is there an issue? Is there some type of change? The great thing is we're able to customize this to each person. So are they utilizing this service for fall detection, wellness monitoring? Are we also, we have the ability for virtual calls, just to kind of check in on people.

We also have medication reminders. So there's a lot of things that we can do with this. And so we're really able to kind of put together traditional caregiving and then also adding in technology.

Nancy Griffin (08:24.591)
Yeah, and you have the rubber hits the road experience, I think that is so important because there are so many different technologies. I went to the CES conference, the Consumer Electronics Show, which is one of the largest trade shows in the world. And the AARP H-Tech Collaborative has a bunch of different technologies. And then you'll see dozens and dozens of other startup companies. unless you can really implement it and use it successfully, then they're not,

they're not very good technologies, right?

Tiffany Robinson (08:58.256)
Exactly. Something else that I like to kind of think about when we're talking about age tech is that it may be able to help out with some of the cost. So I was looking at your glowing older blog and I noticed you had a post on there that talked about how the cost of health care is the number one financial concern in retirement. And so I can't help but wonder if this may be able to help a little bit with that cost. We're not.

maybe looking at 24 hours of traditional caregiving, we can be really strategic with the hours that the traditional caregivers are there. And then we're utilizing some of this other technology, which I also think can lower the cost a little bit. So I get really excited about technology because I'm thinking of it in that perspective as well.

Nancy Griffin (09:47.259)
It's so interesting that you say that Tiffany because I was in graduate school at Cornell in 93 to 95 and literally people were just getting AOL addresses. It was like the very beginning of the internet and the worldwide web.

One of the things that fascinated me about technology was in the hospitality industry, it was one of the only ways to increase revenues and reduce expenses at the same time. So I think that's what we mean when we say disruptive technologies. It really does shift the whole focus. And I'm not sure if your listeners know, but there's more people in the US that are working adults juggling elder care than childcare.

So it's costly and we don't have enough caregivers. So anything that that allows people To have that level of comfort. I love that you use that word because it's such a huge word

to know that their adult, that their older adult is safe is really important. And I love that it frees the person up to do what is most important, which is to have that one-on-one connection with the older adult and to have a social interactions that are so important because as our listeners might know, social health is becoming a really important contributor to overall

health and loneliness and social isolation has become epidemic in this country and globally.

Tiffany Robinson (11:25.876)
It makes me think about the daily virtual calls that we can provide with the connected care. And it gives them a real person's voice that's reaching out and checking out to them and making sure that they're okay. Have we taken meds? How are we doing today? there anything that is causing alarm? And for a lot of people, this might be the only person today that they're talking to.

You know, they may live alone, they may not have family that's visiting every single day. And so having those connections is huge. It's also beneficial for the families. So I think anyone who has an aging family member knows all too well, the worry and the stress that comes with that. So being able to utilize some of these technologies and really just giving you peace of mind that they're OK, we're checking in on them. Great. I mean, just like you said, OK, great.

Mom has let the dog out, right? I know that the dog is mom's favorite thing in the world. And so if she didn't let the dog out this morning, something's wrong, right? And so it's great to just have these technologies that keep us in the know and give these family members peace of mind. Because you just said there's working people who are dealing with elder care more sometimes than child care. And so we want them to have that peace of mind and these technologies absolutely can help give that.

Nancy Griffin (12:50.359)
I 100 % agree. And as our listeners may know, nine out of 10 people want to age, quote, age in place. They don't want to move into senior living. They want to stay in their primary residence. But beyond things in the home that you need to retrofit to be able to age well, there's also things in the larger community. And how are you reaching out? And that's why the people that come into the home on a regular basis can be the difference between being

able to stay in your home and being forced to move somewhere you don't want to move.

Tiffany Robinson (13:26.844)
Exactly. And I also kind of think about how I've been with Comfort Care and At Your Side for over 20 years now. And I remember, you know, our being really excited about the technology of wearables, right? They can have a pendant, they can have a wristband that they're wearing, and this is going to help us if there's, you an issue, they can they can press that. And I remember talking to families and really trying to encourage them to utilize this along with our caregiving services.

And the biggest issue I always ran into, wasn't the cost. It was always, mom's gonna feel awkward wearing something that really signals her as she needs help. I think in our culture, independence is something we really hold dear. It's important to us. And so I just, one thing I love about where we are now, right, technology is always getting better and better, but now we're at a spot where we don't have those things, right? There's nothing that you have to wear that says, hey, this person needs help.

we now have these, you know, sensors in the home that even someone visiting may not even notice that they're there, but they're there and they're able to provide this really great service. So yeah, I get really excited about the technology just because I think it's, it's getting better and better. And we're taking away some of those things that make people feel like this is intrusive, or this is really labeling me as someone that that needs care.

Nancy Griffin (14:50.125)
Absolutely, and who better than your company to be able to vet and help with adoption because a technology is only as good as if, safe or wearable. If you don't wear it, it's not very helpful.

Tiffany Robinson (15:05.128)
You're right. You're right. It makes me laugh because I remember going into homes and you would say, wait a minute, I know that you're signed up to have a wearable. Where is it? And they say, it's on the bathroom counter. you you said you do the same thing. You say, hey, it's only useful if we utilize it. And so I think with where we're going with technology, we've just taken that out of it to begin with. It's now so discreet, it's easy to use. And so we are able to get more benefit out of it.

for using that. Can you share with me what are some of the challenges that caregivers face when we are introducing technology to clients?

Nancy Griffin (15:43.813)
my goodness, quite a few. Well, you know, on our website, Glowing Older, we have a white paper you can download called How to Have Difficult Conversations with Your Aging Loved Ones. so the first part of the puzzle is having hard conversations.

because nobody really wants to talk about a disability or an illness or look at scenarios like perhaps having cognitive impairment down the line. And I think it's so important to have those conversations because once you can open up a dialogue,

then and in a non-threatening way, an adult child saying to their parent, you need to do this, is not necessarily the right way to do it. you have to be able to introduce that technology in a way that doesn't make them go talk to the hand, and shut down the conversation. So.

Tiffany Robinson (16:45.727)
Right?

Nancy Griffin (16:48.027)
I would say that planning for different scenarios and what might come and perhaps getting the home retrofitted or getting a home care company like Comfort For Care involved early enough.

that when something happens down the line, which it's likely to, you're prepared. So I think that one of the hardest things is just to get people to plan in general, because once you get that overall plan with different scenarios, then the technologies fit in. And that's one of the things I love about what you guys are doing with Comfort For Care is that it's a people-oriented business with tech-enabled services.

So I think tech in a vacuum is not the best way to present it. I will also say that having a third party like Comfort For Care be able to introduce the technology and back you up on it.

is really helpful because the older adult is much less likely to listen to the child based on just, you know, history, right? It's like, we just have these patterns that we get into with our parents and they wanna look for the experts. It's like, my doctor says I need this and you become the expert and you're able to introduce these things in a way that supports the caregiver.

Tiffany Robinson (18:16.256)
You're so right. This happens all the time. We see it, you know, from the home care industry. You have where a family will call us and say, we can't get mom to bathe. Mom hasn't taken a bath or a shower in six months. And we send a caregiver out there and they look at the caregiver as the expert and they say, yeah, let's take a bath. Let's do this. I need that. And the family goes, but I've been asking mom for months to do this. What's going on in it? It's exactly that.

They're looking at us as the experts and so it gives us a really great opportunity to come in. And of course, yes, with helping people with getting bathing services, but back to our topic today with technology sharing with them. These are things that we can do that can kind of help the day to day. I think is great. So I know we've talked about remote patient monitoring. What are some other really cool things that are going on right now in age tech in your opinion?

Nancy Griffin (19:13.083)
Well, I think we need to touch on telehealth. I know there's been some things that have been happening with the telehealth side of it, but I think that the ability to get somebody on the phone, a doctor, a nurse practitioner or something is really important. And on the healthcare side, I'll also say like medication management, medication reminders. My mom had...

friend that just moved into independent living when frankly he should be in memory care but his children have really not been able to get him in but she said to me the other day well gosh I just wonder if he's taking his medication so I think these kind of of prompters and support tools are really crucial

And also, and I know some people will hate this and some people will love it, but there's a toilet that can predict whether you have a UTI or whether something has changed with your health. So back to these predictive.

versus detective technologies where they can say something's not right and get it early. And I don't know if people know how damaging a UTI can be, urinary tract infection for those that don't know the acronym, but it can present as cognitive impairment. So you can all of sudden think that your loved one has Alzheimer's when in fact they have a UTI. And it's something that they won't share necessarily. So anything

of the predictive side is really interesting. The National Sleep Foundation had some panels at the CES conference under the ARPH Tech Collaborative, and they were talking about how it's moved, the technologies have moved from detecting that you have poor sleep to predicting what behaviors are contributing to that bad sleep. So I think really kind of coming in earlier,

Nancy Griffin (21:14.775)
is really a game changer for lot of older adults and their caregivers.

Tiffany Robinson (21:21.82)
I love that anything that's going to be predictive, anything that can give us even just a slight knowing ahead of time is going to be a game changer. Like you said, a UTI, it's something super common in younger kids and then also super common in our older population. And it's one of those things where we don't necessarily pick up on it right away, especially if you have a family member who...

already might be slightly forgetful or seems as though we're moving in that direction and then you have a UTI and you're thinking, wow, things are going very, very quickly. And I've seen this happen with families and then we get them to the doctor and they start their course of antibiotics and then they're right back to where they were, right, being their regular self. And so it's hard. We don't always see that right away.

Nancy Griffin (21:58.383)
Right.

Tiffany Robinson (22:13.866)
So if you had something that could say, hey, something's going on here, we may want to check in with the doctor. That is great. Also having like you talked about the telemedicine, that's huge. We all know that sometimes it can be an ordeal taking, you know, your family member or even our clients to the doctor. So if there's times where maybe they can have a telehealth appointment, it's appropriate, it works. It can also be a lifesaver and just

making this process smooth.

Nancy Griffin (22:46.597)
I so agree, Tiffany, and I'm sure that you hear all the time that the older adult will often hide that they fell or hide that they have something wrong with their health for whatever reason. And it could be that they're afraid they're going to be quote, put in a home. they'll be taken out of their environment. there's that fear factor that the preventive tools can really kind of, if you integrate them, and I'll say it again, plan, plan, plan early.

Tiffany Robinson (23:04.138)
You're right.

Nancy Griffin (23:17.001)
have these conversations early before there's a problem because what we find at Glowing Older is that people make poor decisions under stress and the earlier that you can bring in support the better we think.

Tiffany Robinson (23:33.537)
You are absolutely right. I feel like I am always trying to be a champion for plan ahead. You're right. When we're under stress, we are not able to plan in that same way of thinking, what do I want aging to look like? What do I want to be included in that? What are things I definitely don't want included in that? And I even had in my notes here about your 10 tips for having difficult conversations on growing older, because I think it's so vital.

It's so vital that we put a plan together. And a lot of times we are waiting until it's a little bit too late. And now we're in that reactionary mode and the plan is just not going to be as as effective as we want it to be. So the biggest thing for me is always put a plan together. What what do you want aging to look like? And so I think those tips that you provide are really great because it is hard to have those conversations. I think you use the

you know, put the hand up in the face. No, I'm not doing that. And it's right. I mean, that's exactly what people usually those first conversations feel a little bit like, you know, is this an intervention? Am I being cornered? Right. And so I think it's good to think about, you know, here's some tips on having those conversations. And then I'm also always trying to encourage when are we having those conversations. So we want to have those, you know, probably not at the big holiday.

Nancy Griffin (24:33.275)
you

Tiffany Robinson (24:58.488)
where everyone's there and they're thinking, well, this is great. We're all together. Let's have this conversation now. It really should be something that is private and we're coming together and it's really, the people that care about you most saying, hey, let's put a plan together of what you want because we want to follow.

Nancy Griffin (25:15.969)
Exactly. And if you start with that, that which matters most to you, which as you mentioned earlier, is that there's individual plans for every older adult and every older adult is different. You've seen one 80 year old, you've seen one 80 year old. But I just had Michael Clinton with Roar Forward. He was an executive at Hearst for years and Hearst Communications is part of Roar Forward. And one of things he talked about was how much older adults love to travel.

And if that which matters most to you is traveling, then...

your adult child can help you find a technology that can enable you to do what you want. So Jeff Gray from AgeTech Connect, is going to be on the show this week, we're dropping his podcast. He mentioned a company called Travel Assist, that's travel and SIST. And it's an on-demand service that helps you at the airport. And it's a great example of an age tech technology that's good for everyone. So perhaps

your parent has some cognitive impairment and getting to the airport can be really traumatic or you just had a hip replacement and that could be really for someone at any age and my uncle had a hip replacement and he was like well traveling's done for me I'm never gonna do that because I don't want to be one of those people with a wheelchair walking through the airport.

But as we make these things easier, then the technology just come along and enable us to do what we really want to do, which I think is the best use of technology.

Tiffany Robinson (26:55.2)
If someone loves traveling and we're able to keep doing that and doing it safely, right? I hate to hear when people say, I've had this injury, so I'm never going to be able to do, you know, whatever thing is it is that they love. And so I'm super thrilled to have technology coming in and saying, wait, we can do it. We want to do it safely. Let's use this and these steps. And this is how we can still keep you doing the things you love. I think that's a win-win.

Nancy Griffin (27:22.199)
Agreed Tiffany.

Tiffany Robinson (27:23.892)
So we're getting close to the end of our episode today, but I have a couple more questions. What do you see on the horizon? What do you think's coming in the next five years? That's exciting to you.

Nancy Griffin (27:37.751)
my goodness. Well, I think hopefully we'll see some uses of AI. I would love to see more tools in place to avoid the deep fake, which I'm sure everyone knows older adults are the most vulnerable when it comes to fraud and scams.

And part of that has to do with the loneliness equation and the social isolation equation. So I'd like to see more technologies that can detect scams, whether they're romance scams or financial scams and that sort of thing. I'm hoping that AI is going to be a game changer for the better and not for the worse. Also, I'm really excited about the planning technologies that will not only support

Tiffany Robinson (27:57.535)
Right?

Nancy Griffin (28:27.485)
the older adult, but also financial planners. One of the tools that Jeff Gray from AgeTech Connect just shared with me this week is a company called Waterlily. And it's a tool that helps financial planners work with their clients to forecast different scenarios. And he used an example that his mother got early onset Alzheimer's and his father never planned for that scenario. So I think having the financial planner

have tools to help people plan not only for money but just who's going to be involved, what is it going to look like? And I think as we tackle the ageism issue and these conversations become more normalized

that you might have 30 good years once you retire. And what are you going to do with those 30 years? That we'll start to see more investment into technologies that improve quality of life for older adults, not just help them survive.

Tiffany Robinson (29:29.246)
I think it's exciting what's on the horizon. Those are all things that would be great to see improvement on. What would you say is your favorite recent age tech innovation?

Nancy Griffin (29:43.527)
my gosh. Well, I think I need to go back to the travel cyst, the on demand platform for older adults, because I think that travel is so great to get people out of the home. think that home care is incredible, but I think people tend to sink into that.

Tiffany Robinson (29:49.472)
Yeah.

Nancy Griffin (30:04.567)
lazy boy chair and turn on the TV and not interact with people outside. So I love TravelSys. I also am a big fan of a platform called Thrive Pavilion, and it's a virtual reality platform where you get the Amazon or Google, whatever it is, and you can go into the metaverse and interact with other people. And I've heard incredible stories for people that lose their mobile

and are bed bound and can open up a whole new world for them where they're playing golf or playing bridge or interacting with other people and going to virtual concerts and all that. So I think the virtual reality piece is going to be a bigger part for older adults as they get more used to putting on those goggles and going into an online metaverse. think he's got

at least 500 people actively going into Thrive Pavilion. if any of the listeners out here are homebound for whatever reason, I'd highly suggest looking into the virtual reality platform Thrive Pavilion.

Tiffany Robinson (31:15.74)
That sounds so exciting just to think about someone who maybe loved golf their whole life and they may not be able to physically do it, but now they can in this virtual reality. I think that sounds fantastic for what's to come. Nancy, thank you so much for your time and sharing your expertise with us today.

Nancy Griffin (31:37.295)
Well, and thank you and thank you for everything that Comfort for Care is doing to improve the lives of caregivers and older adults.