How ‘Age Tech’ Might Help You Grow Old at Home

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Meet Sabrina, the robotic dog. It’s one in an array of products in the field of “age tech” to support older adults.

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By Bryan Anselm For The New York Times

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How ‘Age Tech’ Might Help You Grow Old at Home

The budding field is turning dreams into reality for older adults who are eager to age in place, filling caregiving gaps and easing minds as America ages rapidly.

Meet Sabrina, the robotic dog. It’s one in an array of products in the field of “age tech” to support older adults.

Credit...

By Bryan Anselm For The New York Times

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By

Susan Shain

April 22, 2026

Dr. Megan Jack, a neurosurgeon in Cleveland, often works 60 or 70 hours a week. And she’s completely unavailable when she’s in the operating room. That makes it tough to be a caregiver for her 76-year-old mother, who lives in a separate unit on Dr. Jack’s property, 30 minutes away from the hospital.

To help care for her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Jack uses an array of high-tech tools, some of which didn’t exist just a few years ago. She manages her mother’s medications with a smart pill box. She changes her television channels with an app, sends appointment reminders through a digital message board — and, with her mother’s blessing, uses cameras for communication and monitoring.

“It’s been invaluable that I can both make sure she’s safe and make sure everything is going well,” Dr. Jack said, “but also give her the independence and the freedom that she still deserves.”

America is aging rapidly. Roughly 11,000 people are turning 65 each day in the United States. And many of them —

75 percent of people over 50

, according to AARP’s most recent survey, from 2024 — hope to spend their remaining years in the comfort of their homes, rather than in assisted-living or other care facilities.

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ElliQ, a tabletop companion robot, sends medication reminders to Bill Castellano, 90, but it also plays trivia and cracks jokes with him in a friendly female voice.

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Zack Wittman for The New York Times

One thing that could help fulfill those wishes is the budding field of “age tech,” which encompasses tools that support older adults. Industry experts say that age tech is making homes safer for older adults and is easing the minds of their caregivers, especially those who live far away or work outside the home.

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