A brain health program at an Oklahoma continuing care retirement community has morphed into a solutions-based group looking for ways to help older adults stay independent longer.
Never Too Old (N2O) Innovators began as an idea in 2019 at Spanish Cove Retirement Village in Yukon, OK. CEO Don Blose shared the evolution of the resident-based entrepreneurial program Wednesday on a LeadingAge membership call.
“If you look down the road, we have infrastructure in place that is barely capable of taking care of the older population we have now. Not too far in the distance, we’re not going to have the infrastructure we need,” Blose said. Most people want to live out their lives in their own homes. What makes a home safer and can lead to longer independence?”
With that question, a steering committee listed approximately 25 concept areas the group would tackle, including activities of daily living, mobility in movement, brain health, financial longevity, personal purpose, physical being and wellness.
Meetings, which involve roughly 20 to 30 residents and staff members, involve discussions about novel product ideas to solve an existing problem for older adults. Those ideas then are shared with students and faculty members from Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma and area vocational-technical schools, which develop, test and refine prototypes.
OSU once sent its big orange bus, nicknamed “Bob,” to transport 50 residents to campus to discuss potential projects and tour research and production facilities. The residents’ feedback keeps the student teams focused on safety, ease of use and cost, Blose said.
Only one product idea has advanced to the patent stage — it involves helping older adults with rotator cuff issues put on jackets or long-sleeve shirts without help — but Blose declined to give too much away before the patent application process is complete. A researcher with 10 patents under his belt said he was interested in going into business with the group, he said, because their ideas “have application for the whole world and can really address some significant and substantial problems.”
Ultimately, Blose said, the goal is to keep the group’s focus on how to allow older adults to age better in their homes and retain their independence longer. The group provides basic brain health in the form of problem-solving and has given many residents a greater sense of purpose.
“We’re an aging society, but we’re pretty new, still, at becoming old, in terms of history,” Blose said, adding that life expectancy didn’t go beyond 65 until after World War II. “There’s this whole new era of aging, and there’s so much opportunity to really figure out how we age better, how we live longer better.”
