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Buyers, funders, and health systems compare products on marketing. Builders rediscover the same gerontology one company at a time. A product proven in one country cannot show it will work in another. AgeTech Prism™ reads every product, anywhere, through the same three lenses, grounded in the WHO's model of human functioning: the same vocabulary, results that compare across categories and borders, published here.
A product enters the prism as its marketing promise and the public evidence that backs or weakens it. It leaves with one classification, Custodial to Generative.
The process
Any AgeTech product, from its public footprint and, where offered, the owner's own material. No category is excluded.
Through the three lenses, Person, Activity, and Context, with every reading placed on the common scale.
The signature and its classification appear here, comparable with every product assessed before it, with curated reading where a gap shows.
The common scale
Every product, from every category, lands on one scale: how far the older adult directs the relationship with the product, from managed to directing and contributing. The words carry the framework's meaning, so here they are in full.
The person is managed. Decisions are made about them, for someone else's benefit.
Looks like: Alerts and data go only to others. The person has no account, no interface, no say.
The person is acknowledged; safety overrides their say.
Looks like: The person is in the loop; opt-outs are rare, buried, or overridden for safety.
The product adapts to the person's needs, still framed by what they lack.
Looks like: Settings adapt to what the person finds hard. The person is a user with needs.
The person directs. Consent, control, and choice are built in.
Looks like: Consent, control, and choice are structural. The person sets the terms.
The person contributes and matters to others, beyond receiving care.
Looks like: The person can give, teach, create, or care for others through the product.
A description of stance
The spectrum rates a product's stance toward the person, whatever the setting it serves. Some products are needed exactly where safety must come first. A bed-exit sensor in memory care and a learning platform for active retirees are asked the same question: how much room does the design leave for the person's own agency? The honest answers differ, and the framework expects them to.
What the spectrum names is where a product stands, ray by ray, so its owner can see where more of the person's agency is possible within the product's purpose. A monitoring device that gives the person an account, a voice, and a real opt-out has moved along the spectrum without changing what it is for.
Whoever holds the device
The aging adult is always the subject of the assessment. A product for caregivers, clinicians, families, or buyers is read the same way: by what it does to that person's agency, through whoever uses it. A family coordination app that shows the older adult what is shared about them and records their preferences sits far from one that routes everything about them to others. Any product that shapes decisions made about older adults is in scope. Whoever the product is for, the assessment is about the older adult.
Where purpose places a product's reach
Illustrative product types, no real vendors.
Every product is placed in one of the same five classifications. The bracket shows the honest reach of the type.
The framework
The lenses are fixed. Every product, from a fall detector to a travel service, passes through all three, always. Every ray threads back to the aging adult at the center.
Who your user actually is. Aging brings functional, cognitive, sensory, and social variation that most products under-serve and leave unmeasured. The framework views your product through this lens first, always. Six rays.
Drawn from occupational science and the practice of occupational therapy. The Person lens reads what the design claims; this lens reads whether the product fits what people actually do: the older adult, the people around them, and the activities that matter to each. Three rays.
Culture, economy, infrastructure, and the local organization of care decide what a product actually does in a life. Here they are rated on the design: whether it can travel across cultures, economies, infrastructures, and systems of care. The rating is the same wherever the product is sold. Four rays.
The pillars · two readings of the whole spectrum
Where the product touches health, safety, and the systems of care
Whether anything measurable changes in the life it touches
Equity & Social Context began as a third pillar and was promoted into the Context lens: access is part of how a product meets its context, and inside a lens the framework protects it more strongly than a pillar could.
Reading a signature
Illustrative profile
The pillars
Reading a signature
The five classifications
| Rating · classification | Fall-detection wearable | Communication tablet |
|---|---|---|
| Person · Gerontology · 6 rays | ||
| Functional engagement | ||
| Cognitive accessibility | ||
| Sensory accessibility | ||
| Identity & Autonomy | ||
| Life-stage fit | ||
| Social embeddedness | ||
| Activity · Occupational science · 3 rays | ||
| Person fit | ||
| Environment fit | ||
| Occupation fit | ||
| Context · Surrounding world · 4 rays | ||
| Cultural fit | ||
| Economic accessibility | ||
| Infrastructure assumptions | ||
| Care-ecosystem fit | ||
| Two pillars · read the whole spectrum | ||
| Care & Clinical | ||
| Impact & Outcomes | ||
| Overall · every ray weighs the same, at most one level above the weakest ray | ||
| Overall classification | ||
Drilling deeper
Each lens opens up into its own profile. Here is the Person lens when you drill in: six rays that surface the variation most products miss.
Mobility, motor variation, fatigue, stamina.
Memory, executive function, attention, decision support.
Vision, hearing, speech, multi-modal interaction.
User as agent, dignity, control, voice.
Active retiree, care-seeking, care-receiving, transitions.
Family, caregivers, peers, community.
The Activity lens
Adapts to this individual's own capacities and routines.
Fits the home, the household, the hands-on care around the person.
The occupations that matter to the person drive the product.
The Context lens
Whether the product's idea of a good old age travels across cultures.
Pricing, funding channels, and public pathways across the economic spectrum.
What it silently requires of connectivity, power, devices, and digital literacy.
Connects into formal services and family caregiving as locally organized.
The rays of the Activity and Context lenses are being developed in the open.
Grounded in the WHO ICF
The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning describes human functioning as the interaction of a person, their activities, and their environment. The framework's three lenses are that triad, mounted as optics: Person, Activity, Context. The ICF also draws the boundary between the two environments a product must fit: the immediate world and the surrounding one.
The mission
The Prism exists to accelerate the creation and evolution of AgeTech products, closing maturity gaps around the product essentials: gerontology, UX, care management, responsible AI, and more.
Why this matters
Most AgeTech is designed for a single narrow user, typically a digitally fluent retiree in good health. This framework forces the wider conversation.
Gerontology knowledge should be openly shared. Every product is read on the same instrument, adapted to its region's context, so results compare across borders.
Privacy by design. Older adults are disproportionately targeted by predatory data practices; the Prism holds a higher bar.
The Prism is early, and its shape is being worked out in public. Perspectives are welcome from anyone who builds, funds, regulates, or cares about AgeTech, and from aging adults whose experience should shape this work.