In April, the AgeTech Collaborative™ (ATC) hosted its second annual Founders Summit in Boston, Massachusetts, where over 100 AgeTech startup founders, innovators, investors, enterprise participants and government leaders gathered to network, attend workshops and discuss the latest developments in AgeTech.
Selecting Boston as the host city was no random decision. In the past half dozen years, Massachusetts has emerged as a flourishing epicenter of all things AgeTech, from startups pushing the boundaries of technological innovation to leading-edge programs that deliver goods and services to older adults throughout the state.
The state’s emergence as a longevity-centered innovation hub is by design. In 2016, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker assembled the Governor’s Council to Address Aging in Massachusetts, led by the Massachusetts Executive Office of Elder Affairs to develop a strategic plan for promoting healthy aging in the state, and to achieve the goal of making Massachusetts the most age-friendly state in the country — for people of all ages.
“Governor Baker wanted Massachusetts to be a global hub for AgeTech innovation,” says Danielle D. Duplin, founder, AGENCY: Worldwide Innovation for Living Longer & Aging Better. “He tapped key leaders across different sectors and formed a roundtable where they could discuss how each organization was serving the state’s aging population, and how they could all work better together.” Another goal of the Council was to recommend improvements in policies, services, infrastructure and other areas, with the goal of becoming a member of AARP’s Network of Age-Friendly States and Communities, which Massachusetts joined in 2018.
The results of Baker’s vision and policy goals have been dramatic. Among the most visible are progressive improvements in the highly organized, overlapping network of government-sponsored, community-based aging services access points (ASAPs), which provide programs and services designed to support adults aged 60 and older, along with their caregivers. Massachusetts ASAP leaders work closely together to ensure that every eligible resident, regardless of where they live, has access to services such as home care, nutrition programs, protective services and family caregiver support.
Other on-the-ground organizations also advance AgeTech innovation and commercialization in a variety of ways. The Massachusetts eHealth Institute (MeHI) assists healthcare providers and organizations throughout the state in the adoption and effective use of health IT and other electronic Health (eHealth) technologies. MeHi also hosts a variety of pitch challenges, and it runs the Digital Health Sandbox Network — an ATC testbed participant — to provide lab space, subject matter expertise and consulting services to help companies accelerate development and bring their products to market faster. Boston itself has become a destination for startups focused on AgeTech, including ATC startup participants such as Kinsome, Penny Finance, Rendever, Kinto, Ianacare, Cake and Embr Labs.
All this activity has caught the attention of the Massachusetts public, too: Starting in 2021, the Boston Globe and the MIT AgeLab collaborated on The Longevity Hub, a year-long series of articles (some written by ATC participants!) reflecting on challenges facing AgeTech and the city’s quest to become a leader in the longevity economy. “My contribution was an article on our Founders Over 55+ Collective to support the growing trend of entrepreneurs who start companies later in life,” says Duplin. “We believe that age is an asset,” she adds, “and that successful older founders are living their purpose, earning money and proving a counter-narrative to ageism.”
Another crucial factor that has helped Massachusetts emerge as a leading AgeTech hub is its unique confluence of key industries and institutions critical to AgeTech, including a high concentration of universities, medical centers and research facilities. This bump-and-connect setting serves as a powerful catalyst for an innovative synergy that is helping propel AgeTech forward. “People from all different disciplines literally bump into each other in the hallways of hospitals and research labs and universities, resulting in a sort of ‘hyper-collision culture’ of ideas,” says Duplin. “This, along with an esprit de corps for entrepreneurship, is a big reason AgeTech has become such a force in Boston.”
Duplin’s own organization, AGENCY, is founded on this principle. Started in Cambridge in 2018 with a state government grant, AGENCY calls itself a “global longevity collective” and invites innovators, influencers and other AgeTech leaders to its thought-leadership events and into its coworking space where they can work side-by-side, connecting and sharing ideas as they each strive to improve the aging journey.
Another preeminent example is the influential and wide-ranging MIT AgeLab, a multidisciplinary research program that works with business, government and nongovernmental organizations to improve the quality of life of older people and those who care for them. Led by Dr. Joseph F. Coughlin, the MIT AgeLab team — comprised of engineers, designers, clinicians, behavioral scientists and other experts — publishes research and thought leadership on a host of topics that cut across the AgeTech spectrum, from caregiving and well-being to the impact of demographic change on airline travel.
As the broad category of AgeTech continues to grow, Boston is dedicated to staying at the vanguard by turning this confluence of government initiatives, healthcare, research and technological innovation into AgeTech clusters, an assemblage of industry-related people and organizations that reaches a critical mass and acts as a magnet to attract more of the same. “The idea is that if you have a certain concentration of talent, startups and enterprises — from research all the way through distribution around a vertical — then you’ll be able to attract and keep the very best in that space,” says Duplin.
The AgeTech Collaborative™ is thrilled to support this growing momentum in Massachusetts — and everywhere. Duplin currently advises ATC on strategic innovation and notes that ATC’s involvement and perspective has been instrumental: “Having AARP commit resources to the AgeTech space and expand it — at scale, nationally — is the catalyst that this whole category needed,” she says.
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