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BLOG – “Samsung for Impact”: Ageing Society

Tackling the Challenges Around our Ageing Society

Switzerland is facing multiple demographic challenges like the ageing society. While the proportion of older people in society is growing, the proportion of younger persons is declining.

What does that mean for us? The one thing we know; it affects us all.

The demographic ageing currently observed in all advanced countries is the result of rising life expectancy and falling birth rates. This leads to an ageing of the overall population.

People will live longer in retirement which will require significant policy changes and puts a lot of pressure on the health care system.

Why?

Physical ageing processes are often accompanied by complex disease patterns. Additionally, a highly specialized, competent but fragmented health care system tends to treat individual symptoms in isolation – which leads to a more ineffective process that generates higher costs for all stakeholders.

Not only challenges but also opportunities

The ageing society’s challenges are already being tackled by entrepreneurs. CARU, for example, developed a digital roommate – a communication system for emergency calls, telephone calls and voice messages that greatly simplifies access to care services and makes life more independent for older people in their own homes.

This is not only a great business opportunity but also a brilliant way to use technology in an innovative way to create a scalable impact on our society.

But beside challenges the ageing society offers opportunities: people stay healthy longer. This creates a new phase of life after the retirement age and offers room for self-development in new lifestyles.

Furthermore, while people are in fact getting older and older in age, they remain at the same time subjectively young for longer. The elderly today stays longer fit and healthy than ever before. For most people today, the “perceived age” is 10 to 15 years below the biological age.

What does this mean for our society?

Our ageing society is both an achievement and a challenge. Topics such as physical and mental health, mobility, housing and social integration are becoming increasingly important for senior citizens. A healthy and active ageing society offers new potential on both social and economic scales. Senior citizens still want to and can contribute actively to a well-functioning society and environment.

With this being said, it is important to foster the understanding of ageing. According to ageingsociety.ch a proper understanding has three prerequisites: The distinction between demographic ageing, as in the age on your passport, and individual ageing – and insight into the variability and moldability of both ageing processes.

SEIF,  Bluelion and Samsung, developed together an acceleration program to support impact driven startups who address the challenges and opportunities of the ageing society, in order to support them in taking their business to the next level and create the highest impact possible.

Are you tackling one of these challenges and do you already have a proof of concept?

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