Heads, Hands and Hearts for Age-Tech

This inaugural event was a wakeup call and challenge to stakeholders to “make this a beginning in super-charging the ecosystem for age-tech start-ups in Japan,” as Dominic Carter, CEO of The Carter Group so aptly put it.

Japan is experiencing the test of managing its unprecedentedly ageing population – the oldest in the world. While Japan leads in this distinction (with nearly 30% of its population aged 65+), the challenge of rapid aging is global, with societies around the globe grappling with innovating solutions and approaches to meet the demands presented.

However, never have we been better placed to rise to the challenge. Advanced technology provides opportunities to improve our quality of life as we age, enhancing physical capabilities as well as emotional connectedness and happiness.

Japan represents a centre of age-tech innovation and is the real-time consumer laboratory for developments in the new area known as age-tech.

Age-tech products and services are at the intersection of ageing and technology, encompassing a wide range of solutions for ageing adults and those who care for them – everything from simple wearables for health tracking to robotic exo-skeletons that aid mobility, to social companionship options, and beyond.

With all this in mind, this event brought together 120 visionary minds designing the future of age-tech for Japan and the rest of the world (i.e., entrepreneurs, startups, investors, established enterprises, universities, research institutes, and government agencies), fostering the meaningful connections needed to collaborate in the age-tech venture space.

Held at the Tokyo American Club (TAC), Heads, Hands & Hearts for Age-Tech was conducted in cooperation with the Vitality Swiss program of the Embassy of Switzerland in Japan.

Helping to super-charge the vision of Living Best through dialog and illuminating comments were a host of international and domestic speakers. Please refer to https://www.living-best.tech for further details regarding all speakers and panelists, as well as replay links:

Age-tech start-ups and business ventures… already demonstrating great promise in improving the lives of aging adults globally and in Japan, shared their basic concepts live, ranging from memory capture and playback (La Camera della Felicita) to software to help hospitals manage risks related to post-operative delirium (PIPRA) and onward to an app that helps aging adults with health, wellness and companion care (CareMates).

In addition, four age-tech start-ups shared their concepts via video … ranging from early dementia diagnostics and memory assistance (Hippo Camera) to communications that contributes to greater sociability (SAIL), to artificial intelligence robotics that helps with reduction of social isolation (Intuition Robotics) to in-home robotics to help with aging in place and independent living (Toyota Research Institute).

Living Best Professional Community is a global knowledge-sharing and networking platform that connects interested parties in the world of age-tech in Japan, wherever they may be.

Living Best User Community, is a consumer-based platform that connects age-tech developers with Japanese older adult users to test product preferences and necessary adaptations.