One of the greatest challenges of the twenty first century will be demographic ageing. The global population of older people will almost quadruple to over 2 billion within the next fifty years. By 2050, half the population of the EU will be over 50, while the death rate will exceed the birth rate from 2015 onwards.
What does this mean in practical terms? The impact on healthcare systems will be enormous. As older people live longer, the cost of caring for their health dramatically rises. According to the World Health Organisation, current global healthcare costs are estimated at $4 trillion and are projected to double by 2050 to become 20 -30% of the world's GDP.
The huge increase in those who need care is combined with a decrease in the number of carers. Fewer young people mean shortages in the workforce. More and more women are working outside the home, placing ever greater pressures on traditional family-based models of care.
Older people who would prefer to live at home are finding themselves forced into expensive institutional care due to lack of alternatives. This puts pressure on hospitals and long-stay facilities which are already fully utilised.
We have to invent new ways to care for our ageing populations. Current health and social care systems are not equipped to face the epidemic of age-related illnesses and injuries. Information and communication technologies offer us a means to prevent disease and injury, to detect problems earlier, to help older people better manage their own health conditions at home, and to personalise care to their unique needs and preferences. All of us will benefit from these kinds of technologies, first as caregivers for our own ageing parents and, if we're lucky, for ourselves some day.
In 2007, the TRIL Centre was established to help tackle this challenge. Our approach is to combine high quality clinical investigation with intensive qualitative research to iteratively develop culturally appropriate technologies that enable older people to live independently at home, whilst feeling comfortable and well connected in their communities. Our multidisciplinary teams of clinicians, scientists, technologists, designers and anthropologists work with older people to invent and test in real world contexts some of the new care paradigms of the future.
Demographic ageing is one of our planet's most pressing social and economic issues; it deserves and demands our attention, our investment, and all of the technology innovation that we can imagine.
Niamh Scannell
European Research Director, Health Research and Innovation, Intel Labs and Industry Director, TRIL Centre
Dr Brian Caulfield
Academic Director, TRIL Centre and Senior Lecturer, University College Dublin
