Houston—Aging 2.0 now has a perch in the home of one of the world’s largest medical centers.
The San Francisco-based organization, focused on supporting innovation tailored to the needs of older adults, kicks off its Houston chapter today with a forum to discuss some of the needs in the aging healthcare market.
“The mission with Aging 2.0 is to bring technologies into the aging market, bring caregivers to the technologies, and bring investors into the intersection of those two,” says Patrick Talley, a Houston entrepreneur who is leading the local chapter.
Talley, a native Houstonian and serial tech entrepreneur, says he first became interested in elder care issues a few years ago when he realized an app he had created where users could add narrative to a sequence of pictures could also be used by Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
After speaking at a national conference on aging issues, Talley says, he began to focus on technology that could be used to help track those with cognitive impairments to prevent them from getting lost or injured. He founded and developed HeraTrack, a wearable device worn by seniors; caregivers can create an electronic fence and track and monitor their loved one on their computer or smartphone. An alarm sounds if the person goes beyond the boundary, and he or she can be found via GPS.
Talley says he hopes to take advantage of Houston’s expertise at the Texas Medical Center and technology more generally, and that by bringing the two communities together, advances can be made to better care for the elderly. “We’re not creating one single new bit of technology,” he says. “We’re just basically looking at a different use case.”
