“Alexa. What should I do today?”

“It is cool but sunny weather, so you should take a walk with a friend. And would you like me to check your retirement benefit status?”

Artificial intelligence assistants might not offer health and wealth advice just yet, but conversations like this are just around the corner. The nonprofit senior advocate organization National Council on Aging is working on an app that will help seniors make smarter daily choices.

“Our mission is to help people age healthier and wealthier,” said Saeed Elnaj (pictured), vice president of information technology and chief technology officer of the National Council on Aging. “People are living longer, saving less money and, obviously with that, there are a lot of challenges. This is where we step in.”

Elnaj spoke with Jeff Frick, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the AWS Imagine in Seattle Washington. They discussed how the digital revolution is transforming senior care (see the full interview with transcript here).

Seniors come in all shapes and sizes

The National Council on Aging was the United States’ first charity to speak up for elderly Americans and has been operating since 1950. Recently, the organization has been undergoing a technical transformation.

“When I joined NCOA about a year and a half ago, we were in private cloud,” Elnaj said. “We had a lot of single point of failures, and disaster recovery was in bad shape.” Since then, the organization has migrated to the AWS Cloud for a more robust environment.

Another benefit is that the NCOA can now offer individualized solutions. “Every older adult is an individual that has specific and individual needs, and we need to really take a look at that and cater to those very specific needs,” Elnaj stated.

BenefitsCheckUp is one of the NCOA’s most-popular solutions, and it is available online for all U.S. seniors. “[It] is our flagship product,” Elnaj said. “It’s the largest decision support system in the country that helps older adults figuring out what benefits they qualify for and how to apply.”

Users can easily check federal, state and local government benefits to find which apply to their situation. Sister program EconomicsCheckUp offers those over age 55 money-management resources, including tips for avoiding scammers and budgeting advice.

Do seniors need screen time limits?

The stereotype of the technophobe grandpa is a thing of the past. More than 73% of U.S. adults aged 70 and older have phones, according to Elnaj. This allowed the NCOA to reach out with a public service drive about its programs. A pilot SMS campaign that asked simple questions with yes/no and A/B answer options was “very successful,” according to Elnaj.

Facebook and YouTube are also channels where the NCOA has invested in digital marketing. “Unfortunately, older adults spend about 46 hours [a week] watching either TV or videos on the web,” Elnaj said. Spending this amount of time staring at cat videos probably isn’t good for anyone’s mental and physical health, but it does give the NCOA a way to educate senior citizens on the services available to them.

For those who prefer face-to-face interaction, the charity also operates around 100 brick-and-mortar Benefit Centers across the U.S. where seniors can go to get advice.

The future of senior care is in the hands of AI assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, according to Elnaj. NCOA is developing the Aging Well AI engine to suggest three positive, and individually tailored, daily activities.

“The idea is to really get the person to actively use technology in simple, frictionless ways to be able to make those decisions that improve their lives,” Elnaj said.

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of AWS Imagine:

Photo: SiliconANGLE