More than one billion people worldwide are over age 60, and this figure is expected to double by 2050. As the global population ages, the systems built to support older adults are beginning to show their strain. Caregiver shortages, social isolation, cognitive decline, complex medication regimens, and the limits of traditional clinical settings are converging into one of the defining challenges of our time.
From autonomous mobility and ambient home monitoring to intergenerational storytelling and drug discovery, current and former Harvard Innovation Labs ventures are using technology to help older adults live with greater dignity, independence, and connection.
Here are seven examples of ventures incubated at the Harvard Innovation Labs, which together offer a window into how the next generation of elder care is being built.
Restoring Natural Vision to Every Aging Eye
More than 30 million cataract surgeries are performed globally each year, making it one of the most common surgical procedures on earth. Yet despite those numbers, the standard of care has remained largely unchanged for decades: Remove the clouded natural lens and replace it with a rigid synthetic implant that can only focus at a single distance. For the millions of older adults facing this surgery, that has meant trading cataracts for a lifetime of reading glasses. Adaptilens is changing that calculus. Its accommodating intraocular lens is made from a soft, flexible material that mimics a young natural lens, allowing the eye to focus at multiple distances.
This technology addresses more than inconvenience. Half of all Americans develop cataracts by age 75, and the National Eye Institute projects that the number of Americans with cataracts will double to approximately 50 million by 2050. By creating a lens that restores accommodation rather than simply replacing it, Adaptilens moves the field from correction to restoration and offers aging patients a more complete return to the vision they had before their sight began to fade. After more than two decades of development and a $17.5 million Series A, Adaptilens exemplifies how deep scientific commitment, grounded in firsthand clinical understanding, can unlock solutions that have eluded a field for generations.
Autonomous Mobility for People with Physical Disabilities
For millions of people living with severe physical disabilities, including many older adults managing the effects of neurological conditions, ALS, or advanced mobility impairments, power wheelchairs represent independence. Yet the gap between what a wheelchair user wants to do and what they can safely execute on their own remains vast. Adventus Robotics is closing that gap. The company has developed an AI-driven add-on system that enables existing power wheelchairs to operate autonomously, using a combination of cameras, LiDAR, inertial measurement units, and machine learning to navigate environments, avoid obstacles, and respond to user commands — without requiring the purchase of an entirely new device.
As populations age and conditions like Parkinson's disease and ALS become more prevalent, the demand for assistive mobility technology will only grow. At the same time, the scarcity of trained caregivers and porters has underscored the need for solutions that expand independence without burdening an already strained care system. Adventus Robotics demonstrates how autonomous technology, developed with care and humility toward the people it serves, can meaningfully expand what's possible for those who have been told their options are limited.
Fighting Cognitive Decline, One Community at a Time
Cognitive decline is one of the most feared and least reversible aspects of aging, yet decades of research suggest that stimulation, engagement, and social connection are among the most powerful tools available to slow its progression. The Brain Exercise Initiative has built a nationwide program around exactly that insight. Based on research pioneered by Japanese neuroscientist Ryuta Kawashima, which demonstrated that daily arithmetic and oral reading exercises can improve cognitive and social function in older adults, the organization trains university students to lead structured brain exercise sessions at retirement homes and senior communities. The model is low-cost, highly scalable, and deeply human at its core.
With more than 80 chapters at universities across the United States and Canada, the Brain Exercise Initiative has transformed a neuroscientific finding into an accessible, community-driven response to one of aging's greatest threats. By placing students inside senior communities as mainstays rather than occasional visitors, the program simultaneously addresses the epidemic of loneliness among older adults — a health risk that research now compares to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. The Brain Exercise Initiative demonstrates that not every breakthrough in elderly care requires a screen or an algorithm. Sometimes the most effective tool is a student with a worksheet and a willingness to show up.
AI-Powered Recruiting for the Home Care Industry
Home care is one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States, driven by an aging population and a clear preference among older adults to remain at home rather than transition to institutional care. Yet the sector faces a persistent, structural crisis: Recruiting and retaining qualified caregivers is a relentless, expensive, and deeply manual process that many agencies are struggling to sustain. Care Hero is addressing this directly. Its AI-powered recruiting platform is built specifically for home care agencies, using intelligent automation to identify, screen, and match candidates faster and more effectively than traditional methods without requiring agencies to expand their recruiting teams.
By bringing modern talent technology to an industry that has historically operated on spreadsheets and phone calls, Care Hero is helping agencies spend less time chasing applicants and more time delivering care. The downstream effects are significant: When agencies can hire better caregivers faster, they reduce turnover, improve consistency of care, and are better positioned to meet growing demand. Care Hero exemplifies a pattern emerging across the care economy. Namely, the leverage point for improving the quality of aging is not always the care itself, but the infrastructure that makes reliable care consistently possible in the first place.
Telemedicine That Brings the Pharmacy to the Patient
Managing medications is one of the most complex and consequential challenges of aging. For older adults, the logistics of interacting with a traditional pharmacy can become a genuine barrier to adherence. Scriptify is building a bridge. With a platform it describes as "telemedicine for your pharmacy," Scriptify enables patients to access pharmacist consultations and prescription services remotely, removing the friction between patients and the medications they need without sacrificing the clinical judgment and oversight that pharmacy care demands.
The opportunity is significant. Medication nonadherence is estimated to cause approximately 125,000 preventable deaths and $300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs in the United States each year, with older adults disproportionately affected. By embedding telemedicine capabilities directly into the pharmacy workflow, Scriptify is working toward a future in which geography, mobility, and inconvenience no longer determine whether a patient receives the medications they've been prescribed. The company represents a new model of pharmacy practice: one built around the patient's life, not the pharmacy's hours.
Connecting Families and Caregivers in a Fragmented Market
The market for home-based care is large, fragmented, and broken on both sides of the transaction. Families seeking care struggle to find reliable, vetted providers. Caregivers lack platforms that formalize their labor, recognize their expertise, and connect them with the families who need them most. X3P is building the infrastructure to fix both sides at once. Its marketplace platform connects families seeking care with compassionate, background-checked caregivers, using technology to streamline matching, scheduling, and coordination in a sector that has traditionally relied on word of mouth and informal referrals.
The economic stakes are significant. The care economy is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the United States, driven by an aging boomer population and a growing preference for home-based support over institutional alternatives. But growth without structure has left caregivers underserved and families under protected. X3P frames its mission explicitly around creating good jobs as well as good care, recognizing that the sustainability of the care economy depends on treating caregivers as valued professionals, not interchangeable labor.
Voice-First Coordination for the Complexity of Care
Care is rarely a single relationship. It is a web of clinicians, home health aides, family members, and administrators, each responsible for a piece of a patient's day, and each relying on the others to communicate in time. When that coordination breaks down, the consequences fall hardest on those who can least afford disruption: older adults managing multiple chronic conditions, people recently discharged from the hospital, families trying to keep a loved one safely at home. The One Care is built for the space between those relationships. The company has developed a voice-first coordination layer that automates the logistics of care such as scheduling, status updates, handoffs, and reminders through natural voice interaction. With The One Care, anyone in the care circle, from a home health aide to a family member calling from another state, can stay informed and take action without navigating new software or learning new workflows.
As the population ages, the volume of people requiring complex, multi-provider care is rising faster than the capacity of the systems designed to serve them. Clinician time is finite and increasingly scarce; administrative burden drives burnout; and families are often left to serve as informal coordinators with no tools designed for them at all. The One Care recognizes that the bottleneck is not information — it is the friction of moving that information to the right person at the right moment. By meeting every member of the care team where they already are, through the simplicity of voice, The One Care demonstrates that reducing the burden of coordination is itself a form of care.
