SC welcomes home leading expert in technology for aging population

According to the census, Americans 65 and older will make up an impressive 21 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, totaling 86.7 million. This drastic increase will pose challenges to states, including South Carolina. To address these issues, South Carolina recruited a high-profile expert in aging to head efforts for developing products that help older adults remain healthy and independent.

Dr. Sue Levkoff, a native South Carolinian who previously worked at Harvard University, has been named an endowed chair at USC to oversee SmartHOME™, innovative research that would allow the elderly to safely live alone.

Levkoff says the state has presented an ideal framework to develop this research by joining together “academia, healthcare systems, government and the business community” to tackle projects like SmartHOME™.

I’m finally in an environment where I can ask the right questions of the right people, and together we can really come up with methodologies to approach research ideas and to get funding to test these ideas so that we can develop the products that older people and their caregivers are going to actually use.

Levkoff says she was attracted by the vision of the state’s healthcare leaders, including a fall detection monitoring system:

They’re utilizing some technologies from bridges–these vibration sensors. And they’ve taken this technology from bridges and engineering, and they’re using it to put underneath the floors in individual homes or in assisted living. This is just a prototype now. We just sent in a grant to see if we could test the feasibility of it.

SmartHOME™ is part of the larger SeniorSMART™ Center of Economic Excellence, of which the other two major components are SmartWHEELS™, for driving independence, and SmartBRAIN™, for brain health. SeniorSMART™and its supporting organizations have invested $2 million in this center. Partners include the University of South Carolina, Palmetto Health, Clemson University, the Medical University of South Carolina, and the Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center. Major support also comes from Columbia philanthropist Charlton Hall.