As the age of the average American continues to rise, the healthcare sector is facing a variety of fresh challenges. The socio-economic transformations will continue to affect patients and healthcare workers alike, leading to changes in health infrastructure, careers, and technologies.
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The aging population is expected to triple in the next half-century and this increase in life expectancy will place a huge burden on the health care system in all countries.
The health care system will need to prepare for the increasing incidences of chronic conditions within the aging population, as well as develop strategies to prevent falls. An important challenge is implementation of new approaches in health care delivery to address the changing health status of this aging population.
In a future of health focused on preventing disease, aging may no longer be defined by disease, but, rather, extended vitality. This shift could have far-reaching implications.
Aging occurs due to the wide range of cellular and molecular damage happening over time. This leads to decrease in mental and physical capacity, risk of disease and eventually death. While this is neither linear nor consistent, these changes are loosely associated with a person’s age.
Impact of Aging population on healthcare. Aging leads to decrease in mental and physical capacity, risk of disease and eventually death. Older people are sometimes seen as a burden to society and the onus rests on the public health systems and society as a whole to look into these issues which have led to discrimination.
Aging occurs due to the wide range of cellular and molecular damage happening over time. This leads to decrease in mental and physical capacity, risk of disease and eventually death. While this is neither linear nor consistent, these changes are loosely associated with a person’s age.
Health care expenses associated with aging. In the year immediately before death is when a large proportion of health care costs attendant with advanced aging is incurred. With people surviving to increasingly older ages, there is a high cost of prolonging life which is shifted to older ages.
Hearing loss, refractive errors, back and neck pain, cataracts, neck pain, osteoarthritis, chronic pulmonary disease, diabetes, dementia and depression are some of the common ailments afflicting people as they age. As people age they also experience several of these conditions simultaneously.
There are the complications brought on by the geriatric syndrome which leads to the emergence of several complex health states which do not fall into any specific disease category. These arise due to underlying issues such as urinary incontinence, frailty, falls and pressure ulcers.
Diversity in older age. There is no specific “older age” that one can benchmark and there are a few “80 year-olds having the physical as well as mental capacity of 20 year-olds, where as there are others who experience significant lowering of mental and physical capabilities at a much lesser age.
The aging population is expected to triple in the next half-century and this increase in life expectancy will place a huge burden on the health care system in all countries. The other shared demographic among countries is the trend wherein the spread of these chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke, cancer, respiratory disease, ...
How can companies shift their focus to health and well-being while also capitalizing on changing attitudes around aging? For one, they may have to adopt emerging technology, which can allow data to be continuously gathered, stored by multiple owners, and selectively made available to generate real-time insights needed for personalized, always-on decision-making. Companies should also forge new partnerships by looking beyond health care to understand how other industries support individuals as they age. Many financial services and long-term care insurers, for example, understand a very different set of needs that has not been a major focus for health care organizations. Moreover, they should go beyond health to understand how basic needs, such as access to the internet or the ability to make mortgage payments, are critical building blocks to “treating” the entire person. As these shifts occur, life sciences and health care organizations will likely see new roles and opportunities emerge to meet the demands of consumers.
The future of aging. In a future of health focused on preventing disease, aging may no longer be defined by disease, but, rather, extended vitality. This shift could have far-reaching implications. What IMPA C T might the expansion of health span—the amount of time that one is healthy in life—have on society?
The future of health. The health industry is on the cusp of a major transformation that will affect all stakeholders. Incumbent players can either lead this transformation as innovative and well-connected market leaders or they can try to resist this inevitable change.
The onset of disease, in some cases, could be delayed or eliminated altogether—cancer and diabetes could join polio as defeated diseases.
In a future of health focused on preventing disease, aging may no longer be defined by disease, but, rather, extended vitality. This shift could have far-reaching implications. What IMPA C T might the expansion of health span—the amount of time that one is healthy in life—have on society?
Health care has been so successful at treating disease that we have more people living with chronic disease today than ever before. 3 Compared to the early 1900s, health care today is much better at extending life span after the diagnosis of a disease. But this phenomenon is relatively recent.
While longevity has increased in the last century, the years we have gained were not added to the end of life. Instead, says Dr. Laura Carstensen at the Stanford Center on Longevity, those “extra” years have been added to the middle of life. 1 Still, today the average health span (age 63) stops more than a decade short of the average life span (age 79). 2 But a future more focused on maintaining health and well-being, supported by radically interoperable data on health and lifestyle, could extend that time further.