The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is a stressful time for even healthy and fit youngsters. So what would be the condition of the elderly? Especially senior citizens with pre-existing health conditions. Some Indian startups like Alserv and Easy Hai have come up with innovative ideas about caring for them and helping them adapt to new normal and beyond.
Crux of the Matter
Independent Life Indeed – Alserv This Chennai based startup provides assisted-living services to the elderly who are living away from their families and want to be independent. Families are trying their best to keep the elders safe, but the senior citizens who are living by themselves face difficulties in managing on their own in these quarantine days.
Atul Jagadish, Jagadish Ramamoorthy, Saravanan Adiseshan, Co-founders, Alserv, Source: YS
How Do They Do It? According to Jagadish Ramamoorthy, Co-founder and Director, Alserv, the users have to use just one platform to order from a range of services such as from food to grocery and medicine delivery at doorstep. The geriatric care platform also connects the users with doctors and healthcare providers to get diagnostic tests and checkups done at home.
All-In-One Platform? The senior citizen community can also request for security services such as guards, routine checks, safety audits, and supervision. They can also hire household maintenance services and house helps for chores. It connects them with vendors for concierge services like ticket booking, logistics, event management, etc. as well.
Source: Alserv
‘Easy Hai’ Digital Era For Everyone! Bengaluru Duo, Shreya and Surbhi Bajaj started Easy Hai this year, to empower senior citizens by teaching them online skills and making them self reliant.
Shreya and Surbhi Bajaj, Co-founders, Easy Hai, Source: YourStory
During the lockdown, when Zoom calls and chats became major modes of communication, they saw how the elderly struggled with the smartphone basics. They began to teach their own family members things like making online payments during the lockdown, to simplify regular errands for them.
Video Calls To Their Rescue! To expand their user base to the people outside their network, they made a plan to boost all senior citizen’s digital literacy. In order to teach them to use mobile and laptop, Easy Hai now conduct tutorials over zoom calls. The topics range from learning about Google Maps, operating Facebook to using Aarogya Setu app. Moreover, users can also put in requests about what they would like to learn.
Mental Well Being Ensured The initiative also lets seniors know the difference between fake news and regular forwarded messages on WhatsApp. Along the way, they might even find companions with similar interests, ensuring mental health boosts in these times.
Some of the most vulnerable groups to the #COVID19 pandemic are the elderly – 65 year of age and older along with #Personswithdisabilities. How can countries improve their care systems to better protect them? 3 recommendations: https://t.co/qnDeiEJdDv #InvestinPeople — Mamta Murthi (@MamtaMurthi) July 16, 2020
The pay-per-class model is followed with classes priced at ₹100 – 150 and a maximum of 20 people can join one session.
Curiopedia
American Association of Retired Persons is a United States-based interest group focusing on issues affecting the elderly. According to the organization, it had more than 38 million members as of 2018.
Marc Prensky invented and popularized the terms digital natives and digital immigrants to describe respectively born into the digital age and one adopting the appropriate skills later in life. A digital immigrant refers to an individual who adopts technology later in life. Statistics and popular representations of the elderly portray them as digital immigrants.
Larry Irving, was Vice President of Global Government Affairs for Hewlett-Packard Company and best known for coining the term, digital divide. A digital divide is any uneven distribution in the access to, use of, or impact of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) between any number of distinct groups, which can be defined based on social, geographical, or geopolitical criteria, or otherwise.
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