Aging Technology Alliance can help Presto fight social isolation
Aging-in-place news: On thursday March 18, 2010 there was a meeting of the newly formed Aging Technology Alliance at Mary Furlong's “What's Next” Boomer Business Summit in Chicago. The meeting had about 50 people from companies, organizations and consultancies interested in joining the alliance. The alliance board of directors presented the vision, mission and new name of the organization to the attendees plus the plans for organizational structure, membership criteria and upcoming plans. There was a groundswell of interest in the alliance and most of the attendees filled out membership forms to join.
Presentations were made by board members Peter Radsliff (Presto Services), Michele Ahlman (ClearSounds), Jill Gilbert (Digital Health @ CES), Bud Myers (firstSTREET), and Laura Mitchell (GrandCare Systems).
The board made it clear that the alliance (nicknamed “AgeTek”) was devoted to promoting the awareness, benefits and value of member products and services, and that this organization was more of a trade group (like a chamber of commerce), rather than an future-think tank. AgeTek Members were defined as for-profit companies with under 100 employees.
The board also presented a special class of Advisory Members for academic institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies with over 100 employees. These advisory members will play an important role in bringing information to the broad membership, acting as a link out to academia and industry, and assisting members in finding methods of distribution for their products and services.
A final membership class of Associate Members was also announced for vendors and service providers who wish to participate with and have special access to AgeTek member companies.
During the meeting, the board broke the room into six committees to discuss the alliance's mission and goals. Each group reported back to the larger group with their one big takeaway while board members attached to each group were tasked to bring the comments and any concerns back to the board for consideration and action. The board mentioned that through these six committees the work of the alliance would get done.
Finally, membership forms were passed out, filled out and turned in and the AgeTek logo was unveiled on a special t-shirt that was commissioned by the board, beautifully designed by Angie Gubler and expertly silk-screened by Rick Creager.
Membership in the Aging Technology Alliance is now open and everyone is invited to join in their respective classes. Commentary on the alliance and meeting itself can be found here on analyst Laurie Orlov’s blog. More information can be found at the alliance website: http://www.agetek.org.
Presto and AgeTek - As Presto’s CEO, my hopes are that belonging to an alliance such as AgeTek will provide many synergies that can help Presto get into the hands of more families that need it to combat social isolation and facilitate long distance caregiving. I was elected as the AgeTek board chairman, and in this capacity I will also strive to create partnerships that can bring more value to existing Presto subscribers as well. It's a brave new world in home health technologies, and smaller innovative companies like those in the alliance is where all the interesting work is happening.
Peter