According to the census, Americans 65 and older will make up an impressive 21 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, totaling 86.7 million. This drastic increase will pose challenges to states, including South Carolina. To address these issues, South Carolina recruited a high-profile expert in aging to head efforts for developing products that help older adults remain healthy and independent.

Dr. Sue Levkoff, a native South Carolinian who previously worked at Harvard University, has been named an endowed chair at USC to oversee SmartHOME™, innovative research that would allow the elderly to safely live alone.

Levkoff says the state has presented an ideal framework to develop this research by joining together “academia, healthcare systems, government and the business community” to tackle projects like SmartHOME™.

I’m finally in an environment where I can ask the right questions of the right people, and together we can really come up with methodologies to approach research ideas and to get funding to test these ideas so that we can develop the products that older people and their caregivers are going to actually use. [Read more...]