Technology: Checking in with LeadingAge’s Tech Guru Scott Code
By Jim Nelson | November 18, 2024
Technology continues to be a leading topic of conversation in the senior living profession. Are there any two letters on the tips of more tongues than AI? Whether the conversation is about staffing and retention, fall detection, resident engagement, or how dining services keeps track of the vast number of dietary restrictions among their hundreds of residents, the industry is talking about — and embracing — technology more and more across the board.
Scott Code is the CAST Vice President at LeadingAge, the “community of nonprofit aging services providers and other mission-driven organizations serving older adults.” He joined LeadingAge 10-plus years ago after implementing technology for people in communities as the director of resident-facing technology at Self Help Community Services, a LeadingAge member in New York.
When I caught up with Scott on a Zoom call we dove into tech from a senior living perspective, but first I wanted to clarify one word in his job title.
SENIOR LIVING NEWS: What is CAST?
SCOTT CODE: It stands for the Center for Aging Services Technologies and its basic core mission is to get more providers to evaluate and adopt technology, but also be strategic about what they’re doing — not just buying something because it’s the new, cool gadget but because there’s some alignment with their organizational goals and visions. We’ve spent a lot of time creating tools and resources to help members sift through this ever-evolving, vast amount of technology, to help members understand what’s out there. We also help members understand how to be strategic about technology. All of them have strategic plans, but very few have a strategic I.T. plan, which looks at their overall strategic plan, identifies how technology can help enable their overall goals, and then makes sure they have the I.T. infrastructures to support that.
AI is something that I’m focused on to provide guidance to members because it covers so many different types of technologies. A lot of times when people are talking about AI, they’re talking about two different things, and I want to level set because AI has been used in senior living for a while, we’re just not aware of it. We use it personally all the time. It’s built into almost everything we do: Netflix reviews, social media, voice assistants, the Otter that you’re using right now [to record and transcribe this conversation] — simple forms that are knowledge based. Clinical decision support systems are using algorithms which is a form of AI, but now with the advent of generative AI it has really gotten people curious, because these consumer-based apps are everywhere now. I think people should be curious about it, but also be a little bit thoughtful about how they approach this. There’s huge benefits to these technologies in terms of efficiencies, ideation, and content creation, and more forward-thinking providers are getting ahead of this.
SLN: It sounds like what you do is tantamount to Consumer Reports with a focus on senior living.
SC: We don’t rate things like Consumer Reports does; we collect information about products, their key features and functionalities, like, “Do you sell to a nursing home? Are you HIPAA compliant? Yes, no.” Those types of questions. We don’t rate whether or not that product is good or bad, we just rate whether or not they have this feature or functionality and then the provider makes the decision based off of what they need. So, it’s an objective way for us to provide guidance on whether or not they need something. We not only provide a spreadsheet of what all the different tools do, we highlight use cases of providers actually using it, so they understand how their peers are doing it too, and that’s just equally as valuable.
SLN: If I run a senior living company or I’m an executive director, can I call you and ask you questions about new technologies, or do you simply provide me with the data, and I take it from there?
SC: It’s a mixture of both. What I usually do is send them a link to, for example, the safety technology tool, which has a white paper that talks about all the different safety technology tools, a listing of all the products that are out there with their key features and functionalities, an online tool, and case studies. If I needed to I could walk them through the online tool, but a member can go to our website, answer 10 questions — from what type of community they live in to what type of sensors they need to are they looking at fall detection or prevention, or wander management — and it gives them a short list of vendors that meet their needs by just answering 10 questions online. If that doesn’t get them to where they need to go, they can email me and I am happy to talk to them, but we provide a lot of information up front.
SLN: There is no topic in senior living that is more top of mind than workforce management these days. Everybody’s struggling with recruiting and retaining staff, so what’s going on in workforce management technology that has you excited?
SC: There’s a lot that you can do with technology to help offset different tasks. There are things happening every month that are repetitive and redundant that staff probably don’t need to do. You really need to be thoughtful and have a digital transformation approach to do some of these activities because you have to reengineer your workflow and processes to really leverage these types of technologies; you can’t really implement robotic process automation or physical robots, or any type of technology, unless you really look at the process. And if that process isn’t changing dramatically, you’re not doing it right. Where I see communities fail at some of this technology implementation is their process hasn’t changed at all. That doesn’t excite me, but it does when someone reinvents what a process is and also reinvents what staff are doing, like roles and responsibilities that are changing because now they don’t have to do this redundant task they don’t like; now they’re actually learning other skills and skillsets. So those are some of the things I’m really excited for.
SLN: There’s a lot of concern about AI and robotics replacing human beings; do you see technology being more about how it enhances somebody’s job as opposed to taking away somebody’s job?
SC: It’s enhancing the job, not replacing. There are situations where I know providers have implemented robotic process automation or robots because they weren’t able to hire staff, and they needed to figure out a way to get certain things done. But in general, it enhances the staff and the ability to upskill and do other more interesting work than some of these repetitive tasks that shouldn’t really be done anymore.
SLN: Are there risks in relying too heavily on technology and automation?
SC: Yes, especially because our industry is very high tech/high touch. The experience for the resident is very important, so you need to make sure that there’s a human aspect. There are ways that you can enhance human experience through technology; an AI algorithm might be able to match residents that have the same interests, but you don’t want to put robots in their room [so they’re] shut in and not coming out in the community. One of the value propositions of senior living is that you’re in a community together, right? A lot of times older adults are moving out of their house into a senior living community because they need that social connectedness, and if you rely too much on technology where you get away from that, it’s a problem. But [there are] engagement technologies within senior living that can get people to break out of their shell and do fun things together as a group, and that’s where I think a lot of providers are using technology to enhance that social experience.
SLN: What other types of new or on-the-horizon technologies are really exciting to you that would make life better for residents?
SC: If it’s not social connected engagement technology it’s about safety and security, but still giving autonomy. If you have to wear something or interact with something, residents are more likely to use it if it’s not a purpose-built technology, per se. An older adult, probably, is more likely to wear an Apple Watch than a smartwatch developed for an older adult. There’s a convergence of capability, functionality, and features from purpose-built technology for older adults and consumer-based technology; before, if you wanted a smartwatch that had fall detection on it, you had to buy something that was specific to senior living. Now an Apple Watch has that type of technology built into it. So, I’m excited to see convergence of a consumer-based technology being adopted, having features and functionalities that some of this purpose-built technology already have.
I’m excited for generative AI because it can help out in so many different ways, and I’m excited to see how this will continue to evolve and how it’s changed so much. It’s an exciting time. COVID helped technology adoption in senior living exponentially because they had to use technology to connect to healthcare providers and to family and friends, and AI is pushing a lot of providers to adopt different AI tools just because there’s such a buzz around it, but I want providers to be thoughtful about what they’re doing and not buy something just because it has AI in it; it has to have purpose and meaning for what they’re trying to accomplish.
