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AgeTech Prism™ is a framework for evaluating technology products built for aging adults, their caregivers, and care providers. The AgeTech industry has no common measure of how a product treats the older adult, so products are bought, funded, and built on marketing claims. The Prism is built to be that measure. A product's marketing promise and its public evidence enter as one beam. The prism separates that beam into five facets: the vendor, the product, the people it serves, the fit of the experience to the aging adult, and the vendor's compliance and conduct. Every placement lands on one five-level scale, and every result is published, comparable across categories and borders.
A product enters the prism as its marketing promise and the public evidence that backs or weakens it. It leaves as five facets, converging into one reading.
The process
AgeTech Prism™ reads every AgeTech product, in every category, from its public footprint and any material the vendor offers.
The vendor, the product, the people it serves, the fit to the aging adult, and the vendor's conduct, each read from the public record, each placement on the same five-level scale.
A level, a number, four facet marks, and a conduct row appear here, comparable with every product read before it, and open to feedback from vendors, buyers, and end users.
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 five levels carry the framework's meaning, so here they are in full.
Others direct the relationship. The older adult is monitored and managed.
Looks like: No account, no say, and no consent step of their own.
Others direct, and safety sets the terms. The older adult is acknowledged.
Looks like: Their choices are rare or overridden.
The product directs, adapting to what the older adult finds hard.
Looks like: The older adult is a user with needs.
The older adult directs. Consent, control, and choice are built into the design.
Looks like: The design gives the older adult the terms.
The older adult directs and contributes.
Looks like: The product lets them give, create, and matter to others.
A description of stance
The scale rates a product's stance toward the older adult, 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 older adult's own agency? The honest answers differ, and the framework expects them to.
What the scale names is where a product stands, attribute by attribute, so its owner can see where more of the older adult's agency is possible within the product's purpose. A monitoring device that gives the older adult an account, a voice, and a real opt-out has moved along the scale 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 on the same five-level scale. The bracket shows the honest reach of the type.
The framework
Five facets, fixed for every product. Twenty attributes are placed on the ladder and read as four facet marks. Five conformance attributes form the conduct gate. The facets are labeled with the WHO ICF component each corresponds to.
Who built it
Environmental factors
The organization behind the product, its grounding in the aging field, its evidence practice, and whether it can be held to account.
What it is
Environmental factors
The promise and the evidence offered for it, how the aging person is framed, what happens to data and AI, and what it costs.
Who it is for
The person
Who the product names as its beneficiary, the older adult's own way in, and the helper roles it depends on.
Whether the person can use it
Activities and participation
How the experience meets the aging adult where their capacity stands, read with the methods of usability, accessibility, content design, and service design.
Whether the builder keeps to the code
Environmental factors
Accessibility, privacy and consent, AI governance, health authorization where the claim requires it, and fair terms, read on a conformance scale and printed as a row beside the reading.
Reading a result
The reading
Level 1 to Level 5: who directs the relationship between the product and the older adult. The number is the score out of 100.
Environmental factors
Four facet marks, labeled with their WHO ICF component
Conduct, the gate
2 of 20 placements rest on no documentation. 1 attribute is undisclosed.
The headline is held to one level above the lowest placement among the ten attributes that are the older adult's own experience.
Grounded in the WHO ICF
The World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning describes functioning as a person, their activities and participation, and the environment around them. Each facet is labeled with the component it corresponds to.
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.