A retirement center in Florida says an iPad pilot program started in July is helping keep residents young at heart.

The iPad’s large touch screen and light weight are helping healthy residents socialize more — as they play with puzzles and games — and it’s been “pretty amazing,” the home director says with re-educating stroke and dementia patients.

I'm a big fan of games for cognitive recovery—I started out with TV game shows (Thank you Alex Trebek and Alan Ludden—and I'm a big fan of the iPad for entertainment and more serious pursuits.

A powerful exoskeleton is helping stroke patients and victims of spinal cord injuries to walk again. "The prototype device is called the Lower-extremity Powered ExoSkeleton, or LOPES, and works by training the body and mind of a patient to recover a more natural step." Developed over the last several years at the University of Twente in Enschede in the Netherlands, the device "can do all the walking for the patient, or it can offer targeted support in either one leg or with one element of the walking process."

What's the Big Idea?

Commercial versions of the product could be developed as early as next year. Beyond victims of medical injuries, the lower-extremity exoskeleton is being designed with military function in mind. A California company is developing an exoskeleton that "enables infantry soldiers to lift and carry weights of up to 90kg in the field, and consists of a hydraulic-powered frame which straps around the soldier's body." In the future, exoskeleton devices may be used by aging individuals to keep pace with younger ones when families are out and about. 

Read it at B.B.C. News

As tens of millions of members of the Baby Boomer generation rapidly near retirement age, America is in need of innovative new solutions that will help it prepare for an unprecedented aging of its population. One answer to America's looming demographic crisis might be a new global movement from the World Health Organization (WHO) to transform cities around the world into "age-friendly" urban zones that better integrate senior citizens into the economic life of the community. New York City – a city that rarely (if ever) comes to mind as a destination to live out a Golden Retirement – just launched the Age-Friendly NYC initiative, with the first Aging Improvement District opening this month in East Harlem. Similar initiatives, launched across America, could be a big step forward in preparing for America's Senior Moment.

A welcome and creative way to approach a problem of increasing urgency.