Emerging and currently available technologies offer great promise for helping older adults, even those without serious disabilities, to live healthy, comfortable, and productive lives. What technologies offer the most potential benefit? What challenges must be overcome, what problems must be solved, for this promise to be fulfilled? How can federal agencies like the National Institute on Aging best use their resources to support the translation from laboratory findings to useful, marketable products and services?

Technology for Adaptive Aging is the product of a workshop that brought together distinguished experts in aging research and in technology to discuss applications of technology to communication, education and learning, employment, health, living environments, and transportation for older adults. It includes all of the workshop papers and the report of the committee that organized the workshop. The committee report synthesizes and evaluates the points made in the workshop papers and recommends priorities for federal support of translational research in technology for older adults.



Table of Contents


Front Matter
Executive Summary
Part I: Steering Committee Report -- 1 Introduction and Overview
Part II: Overview Papers -- 2 Cognitive Aging
3 Movement Control in the Older Adult
4 Methodological Issues in the Assessment of Technology Use for Older Adults
Part III: Domain-Specific Papers -- 5 Addressing the Communication Needs of an Aging Society
6 Technology and Employment
7 Everyday Health: Technology for Adaptive Aging
8 Technology and Learning in Current and Future Elder Cohorts
9 The Impact of Technology on Living Environments for Older Adults
10 Personal Vehical Transportation
Appendix A: Workshop Materials
Appendix B: Biographical Sketches