CES 2021 Roundup: Mission-driven technology takes center stage
Happy Friday! The all-virtual CES 2021 has officially wrapped up, and what a week it has been! This year marked my third year in a row attending CES, each year to showcase the latest and greatest that Rendever has to offer alongside our friends at AARP Innovation Labs (to whom I owe a major thank you for bringing us along for the ride each year; can’t wait to see you all again).
While we haven’t had the usual pleasure of coordinating meeting locations based on whatever cool technology you’re standing next to or bumping into old friends on the casino floor… attending this event in full virtual mode is an ode to these pandemic times. The biggest tech conference in the world could theoretically pull out all the stops, but it was more of a safe week limited to exhibitor chat tools and watching a combination of prerecorded sessions and livestream interviews. This is unsurprising — we’ve all been through virtual event after virtual event and seen much of the same — but in my eyes this week really solidifies the limited nature of the virtual conference circuit and makes me incredibly eager to restart in-person events. We just booked our first national conference for next September, so here’s to staying extra cautious for a bit longer and doing our part to allow vaccine distribution to move quickly and effectively towards herd immunity! (*please*)
One of my favorite parts of the in-person event is running around the showcase and hosting my own abstract CES Awards by Kyle, but the third iteration of that will have to wait until next year. In the meantime, I thought it would be worth recapping some of the highlights from CES 2021 this year… as seen from the lens of a startup CEO focused on high-impact niche technologies.
First and foremost, let’s talk VR
Full disclosure… I love VR. The Rendever platform is a VR platform, our office is decorated with every VR headset we’ve ever played with, and we recently started offering Supernatural subscriptions as a part of our employee health benefits package.
Every year since at least 2015, it seems that VR makes a pretty broad splash at CES. This year, I feel like the overall theme has been a narrowing of focus. There’s no question that the industry has matured significantly during the pandemic, and the sense that I’m getting going into 2021 is that there are clear winners in the enterprise arena that will continue to rise and thrive.
For hardware: Oculus is clearly winning on the consumer headset front, but Pico has taken the enterprise channel by storm. We recently shifted our enterprise platform to Pico, and the flexibility to control the full end-to-end process, including our custom mobile device management (MDM) system, has been amazing. For the demographic we design for, owning almost every interaction is critical to ensure the cleanest user experience, and Pico has gone above and beyond here.
For software: we’re seeing some familiar faces getting stronger. The team at Spatial has done some incredible work over the past year and everyone I talk to who has had the chance to use their remote work collaboration tools has had nothing but exciting feedback. Healium continues to make a splash, and their approach to interfacing XR with brainwave technology is exciting for the future of immersive brain-machine interfaces (especially for someone who used to work in the field and still loves to geek out over neuroscience).
Things worth looking out for? Samsung’s role in the VR hardware industry has been waning, but one of the startups working within the Samsung C-Lab caught my eye. Flux Planet is working on an intelligent avatar creation solution that, if successful, will definitely be a huge opportunity for the future of avatar-based XR interactions.
One of the biggest winners of the pandemic? Telehealth
It’s safe to say that public health is on all of our minds… probably far more than we ever would have expected. I’m sure we’ve all had some unique experiences in the health arena over the past year, and we’ve all gotten a chance to see firsthand what everyone in the healthcare industry already knows — healthcare in the US is broken.
Luckily, there’s a massive and growing tide of thought leaders, policy makers, tech giants, and startups who are working together to change this. This is a trend that has been rising for years, but is really ripe today because public perception is at an all time high.
In order to move effectively, collaboration across sectors is key. Richard Zane, Chief Innovation Officer at UCHealth, summarized the successful pragmatic approach that they’ve taken in value creation through industry partnerships, and it all stems from a simple set of questions — “It’s really understanding our pragmatic need. Understand that industry has a cadence that’s not the cadence of academic medicine, which is glacial. Where do we overlap? How do we work together? How do they help us and how do we help you and how do we all take advantage of the value that we create?”
Philips has been at the forefront of this movement, and this year was no different. Their collaboration across the year with BioIntelliSense has led to an exciting focus on remote patient monitoring through biometric data transmission at a high frequency interval — critical for telehealth — through the single-use, FDA-cleared BioSticker™. Also worth noting is the Philips Biosensor BX100 — an exciting wearable biosensor that allows for remote monitoring and patient deterioration detection — it recently received 510(k) clearance and has big potential to reduce transmission risk between COVID-19 patients and healthcare workers.
While big tech companies are making moves, startups have always been at the forefront of the telehealth movement, and that’s no different today. In line with CES 2021, the largest digital health accelerator in the world — MassChallenge HealthTech — officially welcomed their 2021 cohort. These are the latest in a long list of companies tackling healthcare challenges head-on through partnerships with companies like Anthem, the American Medical Association, and Takeda Pharmaceuticals.
5G: A Year in Review
5G had an interesting year in the realm of public perception — with a huge level of excitement in early 2020 turning into baseless claims linking 5G to the spread of coronavirus. Luckily, it seems like those conspiracy theories have died down, making room for the conversation to shift back to the future. And what a future it will be!
We had the opportunity to kick off 2020 with a tour of the Verizon Innovation Center — and it was nothing short of incredulous. The demonstrations we saw spanned every sector of public and social impact, and we started working with them on understanding the impact of 5G on VR. Unfortunately I can’t provide more detail right now, but I was really happy to see that the nature of the conversation surrounding 5G at CES was overwhelmingly positive.
The future is bright here, and it’s due to the relentless work of major players like Verizon. It’s been exciting to see big tech designing for 5G with Apple launching their iPhone 12 lineup ready to handle 5G networks.
- Samsung alluded to automotive array systems that will include pedestrian detection expected to be 10x faster through 5G
- Lenovo (who also is making moves in the XR space) unveiled its newest laptop, the IdeaPad 5G, which includes a 5G modem
- 28 NFL stadiums will launch an AR-based SuperStadium experience, only on 5G-enabled devices
Mission-driven Technology Takes Center Stage
The CTA Foundation has played a big role in centralizing and spreading information about technology that shapes the lives of people who need it most. As an age-tech startup founder, I’m in awe of the work that they’ve done and the focus that they take on empowering older adults to live better and find fulfillment through technology. I kickstarted CES this year with a conversation with CTA Foundation Director Steve Ewell, and was excited to see the work that he’s doing take center stage throughout the event. The three big categories to highlight are age-tech (of course), accessibility tech, and mental health tech.
Age-Tech
Perhaps not the sexiest topic, but one of the most impactful, is age-tech. As Dr. Joe Coughlin, Director of MIT’s AgeLab, would tell you: the longevity economy is an emerging market that is hiding in plain sight. Rendever’s mission centers around reducing social isolation, so we’ve been focused on the aging demographic since inception. Every year, age-tech steps closer and closer to the spotlight, but the challenges brought on by the 2020 pandemic took our industry to center stage overnight.
As we all know, older adults have been particularly vulnerable to COVID-19. Communal living fueled the spread of the virus and perhaps most importantly, physical distancing protocols exacerbated the (already critical) issue of isolation and loneliness. As Lisa Marsh Ryerson, President of the AARP Foundation, duly noted, “isolation is on the rise across the life course, so it’s more important than ever that we’re working to be sure that connections remain strong so that physical distancing becomes social disconnection.”
I could write an entire blog on this topic alone, but for now I’ll just say: it was a huge year for age-tech. Telehealth, video conferencing via Zoom and facetime, remote monitoring sensors, and innovative approaches to social engagement have been the biggest trends of the year.
- AARP Innovation Labs showcased 9 startups that they have partnered with focused on innovations within the aging space (my favorite is Rendever, but I’m not biased)
- CarePredict named CES 2021 Awards Honoree for the second year in a row, showcasing their ever-important fall detection solution
Accessibility Tech
Speaking of Steve Ewell, the session he moderated on tech combating isolation was nothing short of inspiring. Bradley Heaven and Daniel O’Connor of All Access Life shared their story about Bradley’s journey with nonverbal spastic cerebral palsy and their mission to create and share accessible resources for all. The pair showed off the eye tracking technology that Bradley uses to communicate during the session, which certainly brought the innovation to life for attendees.
Mental Health Tech
2020 was a massive year for mental health technology. It wasn’t long ago that Calm became the first mental health unicorn, and their growth trends during the pandemic highlights just how important mental health has become for all of us. VCs are moving quickly in this space (again, Calm closed 2020 with a financing round that valued their company of less than 300 employees at $2b), and startups are taking notice, much to the benefit of us all.
- The CareOS Themis Smart Mirror is set to hit the shelfs this year, and claims to interpret mental health data to help identify when stress reduction may be necessary — I love the concept of smart mirrors, I’m eager to see where this goes
- iMediSync is taking consumer-grade EEG to the next level with a helmet-looking device that they claim can detect depression and risk of dementia through AI. This is a definite path of evolution for these technologies, although the number and placement of electrodes isn’t totally clear (nor is the data currently)
Looking Ahead
The last year has been unspeakably difficult for so many. In our industry, the fear, stress, and sorrow was real every single day. But as I reflect, I choose to focus on the positive. The caregivers and administrators on the front lines of care have shown unshakeable courage, creativity and innovation, true collaboration, and a resilience that I can’t quite explain in words.
Looking ahead, I couldn’t be more excited that the roll-out of the vaccine is already happening. By January 2022, I fully plan to be back in Vegas to reconnect in person with all of you (and maybe lose some money while we’re there). Cheers to a better year ahead!
