Amid growing pressure on the U.S. healthcare system to meet the needs of its aging population, the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) launched a new initiative this month to build a roadmap for delivering effective, digitally enabled care to older adults who want to spend the later phase of their life within their own homes and communities.
“We’re going to see an enormous wave of folks aging into Medicare, and the reality is that the majority of existing Medicare beneficiaries and soon to be Medicare beneficiaries, do want to age in their own home, and yet the system is not optimized to do that,” said DiMe CEO Jennifer Goldsack.
At the same time, the federal government is leading a push for technology, data, and interoperability to improve care for Medicare beneficiaries — creating a window of opportunity to modernize the “aging in place” process, she explained.
Over the past five or six years, the first wave of agetech — technology aimed at helping older adults live independently — developed largely in isolation, Goldsack noted.
“The reality is, all of that has been developed in a complete vacuum from the actual patient journey, from the workforce needs, from reimbursement considerations, and from emerging, new categories of technology, like smart home technologies. This is why we’re really excited to do this work now,” she declared.
If the country’s healthcare system doesn’t figure out how to better leverage technology for aging adults, many older people will end up in nursing facilities simply because they can’t be safely supported at home, Goldsack said, adding that this situation would not be sustainable financially or operationally.
She pointed out that DiMe’s new project brings together a diverse group of stakeholders to the table — including health systems, home health agencies, technology vendors and telecommunications providers. Some of the participants include Epic, UMass Memorial Health, Validic and Withings.
The goal is to connect groups that rarely collaborate, yet are all essential to making home-based care for older adults work — from delivering oxygen tanks to ensuring internet connectivity and data exchange between systems, Goldsack stated.
She expects the project to help create more practical solutions that address challenges in home care, chronic disease management, dementia and care transitions after hospitalization.
Goldsack said that by mid-2026, the participating organizations will have created industry playbooks outlining what “good” looks like for each stakeholder group, policy and funding guidelines that recommend incentives and payment models, and case studies showcasing early examples of aging-in-place success stories.
Photo: MoMo Productions, Getty Images
