Q&A: Eric Kihlstrom on achieving impact with health tech

Meet the judges: Eric Kihlstrom, Chair of OpenAge and UK Ambassador to Ageing 2.0.

“I remember going into care homes with my care planning software and being profoundly impacted by the realisation that some of the people in the care home were younger than me. It really drove home the need to support people to live the best life possible, regardless of the setting. Hopefully, we can help people live happily in their own home for as long as possible.”

Why are you excited to be judging the Longitude Prize on Dementia?

There’s an increasing focus on innovation around ageing as a disease, and Alzheimer’s falls into that category. It’s not that people don’t know what to do in terms of stress, exercise and eating well, but we need to refocus on quality of life, not just for Alzheimer’s, but for other long-term conditions too. I think what we’re doing with the prize is improving quality of life. If we can do that, we can keep people living with dementia out of institutional settings, and research shows the majority of people want that.

What experiences and insights will you be bringing to the judging process?

My background is in tech and innovation. In 2015, I joined a care start-up. We walked around care homes simply observing people and what was needed. We ended up creating care-planning software specifically for residential care homes. Bringing digital technology into the care industry was the most humbling experience I ever had – it made me realise that to really have impact, you have to keep people out of the care home, as opposed to managing them when they’re in the care home (which is what is currently done in residential care).

I started Ageing 2.0 – a global innovation network for helping to improve the quality of life for older people. That got me involved with the UK Government’s industrial strategy, so I contributed to the Ageing Society Grand Challenge in 2017. Everything I do is focused on keeping people out of the health and care system, and improving the quality of life through that process.

What difference do you think assistive technologies will make to people living with dementia?

Technology advances, including AI, can do just about anything. What is important to focus on is augmenting the human touch. Technology must be used to help make carers more productive and life easier for people living with dementia. For instance, AI could help someone living with dementia understand who their relative is before they arrive to visit. Then, when a carer comes into the home, whether that’s a professional or a family member, they will know more about the situation.

In residential care homes, until you had digital planning, you did not know if someone had actually eaten if they told you that they’ve had lunch. Now, you can look at the care plan and see what care staff have recorded, so that if they don’t remember, you can provide a proper level of care. Simple care planning records can make a huge difference, because people with dementia need to be reminded of what actually happened.

What do innovators need to take into consideration in designing for this audience?

When we as judges look at this, we have to look at what is sustainable. There are three things I think innovators need to consider.

• Products need to be designed well – we need something that is designed with a human at the centre of the solution. It must be intuitive, not something that looks like a piece of complicated agricultural equipment.
• We have to talk to people’s aspirations, so language is really important. The health system talks down, they call people “patients”. It’s “people-centred care” not “patients”. We need to change language when we want to drive change.
• Business model innovation is critical. Clayton Christensen, the Harvard academic who developed the theory of “disruptive innovation”, has shown that business model innovation is even more powerful than technology innovation. We must get innovators focused on the really impactful levers of change.

These are the three things that I think will help us to drive impact at scale.

Meet the full Judging Panel for the Longitude Prize on Dementia