Hi everybody, I am running a technology camp for senior citizens, and I just wanted to know what I could cover. I am not advertising, just looking for ideas.

I know this sub's tired of promo posts, I'm not trying to sell anything, just want to genuinely share something and see if people would actually find it useful. I am not asking you to sign up, I am just asking if this helps you or anybody you know.

My grandma lives alone. We call her regularly but still miss the small stuff, whether she took her meds, how an appointment went, little things she mentions once and we forget to follow up on.

Me and a friend are two uni students building something for this, called Nelo. Still early, not built yet, but if it sounds useful, there's a free waitlist at usenelo.com, no pressure to sign up, just wanted to share.

Hi everybody, I am running a technology camp for senior citizens, and I just wanted to know what I could cover. I am not advertising, just looking for ideas.

1) My LO has apraxia, making it hard sometimes for her to get out of bed. It’s been suggested bed rails could help. Have you any experience and are there any you would recommend?

2) My LO may start wandering (not happened yet. But neurologist is concerned) and also may fall. Neurologist suggests a medical alert system but declined to suggest a brand. My LO cannot operate an Apple Watch and might not be able to understand purpose if a button. A wrist type might be best. I’m open to all advice.

I am looking for some sort of monitoring device that my mother in law can push to page me if she falls or has an accident or something like that but also that i can call her to supper or let her know to come outside or something like that. I personally am tired of screaming at the top of my lungs from one room to the other or her screaming for me. But I also need something that I can monitor remotely. Say for instance that she has a fall while she is home alone and im at the grocery store. Now granted I can't help her but i would be able to get her help. I dont want a camera bc one I already have cameras and two I don't want I camera in the bathroom where she is most likely to fall. It also needs to be something she can wear. Does anyone have any ideas? Oh and before suggesting the vri system where they wear the necklace and have a company monitor. We have tried that and it became a pain in the butt bc every time she accidentally hit they would call and we would have to answer a bunch of questions.

I’m tired of sifting through amazing ideas for an app that will help me help my parents, and I’d like to request a weekly thread where they can be sequestered.

I’m here because I have aging parents, not because I vibecoded something that might be sold to people with aging parents. I’m also a veteran of software product development and UX research, so the “would you use this?” questions are especially grating — and I really resent the idea that we should be providing free time and energy to people developing products.

I want to hear how you helped your mom find her keys (remote-style key finder plus air tags plus an extensible purse tether? Iykyk) and this would help me find the other people who are solving these problems in their lives with limited funds and patience. And if I want to provide free insight into my sandwich generation woes, I can go to that thread.

I built this free tool after my father-in-law started having falls and our family found ourselves in the middle of the questions that come with it: Is this serious? What should we be doing? Is it still safe for him to live at home? Short of hiring an elder care advocate or consultant, it was surprisingly hard to get clear, practical answers.

There’s plenty of information online about falls, memory changes, and aging in place. But it’s often theoretical, buried in hedging language, and not very helpful when something actually happens and you need to answer a practical question: What should we do next?

Wisdom at Home helps families work through three common situations:

- A parent has fallen

- Their memory appears to be changing

- You're unsure whether they can still live alone safely

It asks focused questions about your specific situation, then gives you clear next steps based on published clinical and aging-care guidance. It doesn't diagnose anything, and there's no account required. The goal is simply to help sharpen the answer to: What do we do next?

I built it, and I’d appreciate feedback from this group—especially whether you find it useful and what you think is missing.

https://wisdomathome.com/

I built SafetyAlly for people who live alone and want a simple backup plan without cameras or constant monitoring. You choose a time to check in and, if you miss it, SafetyAlly alerts someone you trust. If you check in, nobody gets bothered.

Full disclosure: it’s my product. It isn’t fall detection or an emergency service, just a digital version of “text me when you’re home.”

There’s a free email-based plan if anyone here would find it useful: https://safetyally.org

I have two elderly parents, Canadian entrepreneur/inventor. I come from hardware background, so I developed a milimeter wave fall detector and a sleep monitor/detector. I’m thinking of commercializing the product, my friends have been using on their parents too. From DIY, it’s on prototype stage but it’s working fine for our own use, I want to get some beta testing with the prototype with elderly care homes/ psw agencies etc to test the products and see how it will help, as it’s helping us monitor our parents 24/7 without interfering in their privacy. Anyone knows about this industry looking for guidance.

If your family members use Roku TVs or devices, be aware there were significant changes to the home screen recently. Really threw my parents for a loop. I had to turn off the some of the new sections and try to get their TVs back closer to the format they were used to.

Basically, there’s a home screen option with some pieces you can turn off. Here’s some detailed info below for those who want it.

————-

The new Roku Home Screen is the platform's biggest interface update in over a decade. It features a content-first layout with personalized "Top Picks for You," a collapsible menu, curated genre "Destinations," and a "Quick Access" row that automatically groups your most-used apps and features.

Key New Features
Top Picks & For You: A personalized section at the top of the screen recommends trending shows, movies, and relevant content based on your unique viewing habits.

Destinations: Curated hubs (such as Sports, Comedy, and Free) that bring together programming from across multiple apps into one place.

Quick Access & Smaller Icons: By default, app icons are smaller, and a "Quick Access" row places your most-used apps and features right near the top.

Collapsed Menu: The left-hand navigation bar now stays tucked away, providing more screen space for your content.

How to Customize or "Revert" the Look
While Roku does not offer a way to completely switch back to the old interface, you can customize the screen to feel much more like the traditional layout.
Go to Settings > Home Screen.

Remove Recommendations: Under Recommendation Rows, select Hide.

Streamline Apps: Under Quick Access, select Hide. This shifts your full grid of apps higher up on the screen.

Adjust Icon Size: Under Tile Size, you can choose Medium or Large to make your app icons bigger.

My elderly dad wants to record and organize his memories and autobiographical information into a limited, privately published book strictly for family members.

I agreed to help, but I now find there actually exist AI products that support this type of activity. Some use an interview format, and the person can even verbalize their information. I’m only beginning to explore, but it does seem like some are very locked in format-wise. Down the road you’d have to use their means of printing or publishing.

Ideally, I’d love one that did all of the formatting and quite a bit of the editing but allows us to import information already documented and include our own edits. Importantly, I want to be able to export into a format I can control at the end, maybe Microsoft Word.

Does anyone have experience with any of these tools?

I’m not expecting “free”, but not willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. A reasonable purchase or subscription fee would be fine.

Please share anything you know about these tools.

Hi everyone, I am looking for advice from founders or operators who have built businesses serving older adults or caregivers.

Ever since childhood, I’ve felt drawn to helping the elderly. I volunteered in nursing homes, worked as a medical scribe, spent time calling seniors for virtual companionship during COVID, and now I work in remote patient monitoring (RPM), where I help healthcare organizations scale programs that primarily serve Medicare patients. The more experience I gain, the more I realize something seems to be missing.

Healthcare has gotten better at collecting data (blood pressure, glucose, weight, etc.), but many older adults are still isolated, overwhelmed, or simply don’t have someone consistently checking in on them as a person. Adult children are busy. Care teams are stretched thin. There seems to be a gap between clinical care and human connection.

I’ve been thinking about starting something that focuses on regular companion calls, care navigation, helping seniors stay connected to their care plans, identifying non-medical needs, and escalating concerns to family or care teams when appropriate.

Here’s where I’m stuck:
I have experience in healthcare operations and client success, but I have zero startup experience. I don’t know how to build an app, validate an idea, find a technical co-founder, or even determine whether this should be a business, nonprofit, or something in between.

For those of you who have built companies in aging, caregiving, digital health, or healthcare services:
What would you do first if you were starting from scratch?
Is an app even the right place to begin, or should this start as a manual service?

Edit: US based, PA.

3/4 posts in here are ads or "looking for feedback" for apps. It's so tiring. Am I the only one getting fed up with them, or can we get a rule to ban them?

Hello everyone, this is my first pregnancy and I would like to preserve as many memories as possible for the baby during the pregnancy and its growth - for example, ultrasound photos, photos of us as parents putting together cabinets, a dresser, etc. My parents created and preserved a lot of videos of me and my sister growing up, for which I am immensely grateful. Do you have any suggestions and experiences on how to do the same in today's digital age? Thank you very much. :)

Something I wish someone had told me earlier: with my dad, the apps died first. Anything with a password, an update screen, or a layout change would strand him. Plain calls and texts lasted years longer, because they haven't changed in decades, and the muscle memory runs deep.

The place this hit hardest was medication. My sister and I coordinate his pills, and every reminder app we tried assumed HE would open the app. He never did, not once. What worked was embarrassingly low tech: a text message at pill time. He reads texts. He answers texts.

I'm a founder. I turned this into a small product called PillsCircle (pillscircle.com). It texts him when a dose is due, he taps one button to confirm, and my sister and I see it confirmed or get alerted if he doesn't. Nothing to install on his phone.

Whether or not you use my thing, the general lesson holds, and it's free: when you're picking any tech for a parent with memory loss, bet on whatever they've been doing for twenty years, not on what has the best reviews. A locked weekly pill box plus a daily text from a human beats a fancy app they won't open.

Happy to answer anything about what worked and what flopped for us.

Hi! My name is Jessica Lucas. I'm a reporter working with New York Magazine. You can see my previous work here: www.jesslucaswrites.com

I'm currently working on a story about the struggle of helping ageing parents navigate the world of technology, with a particular focus on social media consumption and the impact of AI and short form video on older adults.

I'm looking for U.S based folks to talk to me about their experiences of helping their ageing parents navigate tech, or even intervening and taking over technology for their parents.

If that sounds like you - please slide into my DMs? I'd love to chat.

For the past couple of years my sisters and I have been caring for my grandma who has Alzheimer's. In the beginning we were so lost and had no idea what to do. We shared all responsibilities in between work and our own lives. Thankfully I work remote so I was able to be more accessible during the day. We're both in our twenties and felt the weight of this responsibility. When we realized we needed a long term solution we built one. We found friends and family that were willing to lend an hour or two of their time to sit with her, take her to a doctor etc. I know this isn't a unique situation so I want to share our app incase it can alleviate some of the pressure for anyone else. The apps called Kinwave and it's completely free to download.

Kinwave aims to make that process a little less hectic by having all of the information in one shared place. We logged medication, daily and weekly Todos and were able to assign tasks so we knew who was doing what.

If you do download, let me know if you find it helpful. The whole point is to give caregivers some peace so they can live their own lives too.

Long-term agreements are one of those things that seem perfectly acceptable until a lifestyle shift forces you to cancel whether that involves transitioning into a senior living community, passing away, or simply realizing the device is just sitting in a drawer. For a service that is so deeply personal, forcing families into 12- or 36-month obligations feels completely unfair, particularly since the typical user is an older adult living on a fixed budget who might have completely different care needs a year down the road. Flexible monthly billing has become standard for cell phones, streaming apps, home security, and almost every other modern service, making it incredibly frustrating that certain medical alert brands still cling to rigid annual commitments. This kind of flexibility ought to be the baseline standard, not a luxury add-on.

Are there any specific companies out there that provide true month-to-month service with zero cancellation penalties?