Fall prediction

I'm all in favour of looking for new ways to engage our older people in new technologies - and that's exactly what I've been doing for the past 20 years, and that includes introducing everything from computers through to robot floor cleaners to my 88 year old father and my 89 year old mother-in-law. They will play along for a while, but rapidly lose interest unless it's something that they will need and use every day. So while they both now have digital TVs with hard discs for recording programmes, and pretty complicated remote controls, neither has bothered to use the DVD players that came with them even though we stayed with them to watch The Sound of Music or Sink the Bismark to show them how the technology works.

They have both used Play Stations, Wii and Nintendo DS consoles to play games with my kids at Christmas - but when asked again in the New Year, they said no.

Whilst I would encourage designers to consider the need to engage older users as a matter of course, I still ask the question whether we should be trying to push very old people into accepting something new today, rather than waiting 10 years when people of a similar age will readily embrace it. I am certain that Baby Boomers (including myself) will have very different views on using technology than today's older old. M-care will play a major role in reducing the cost of healthcare for us - but we need to be patient.