Season 2: Episode 8 - From Awareness Day to Care Crisis: Aging, Data, and Access

Andie Cartwright

Welcome to the Better Living Through Data podcast. Anthony, yesterday was National Senior Health & Fitness Day, and I love the spirit of that -- walks, screenings, movement, community -- but I also hear a much bigger message in it. This is not some tiny awareness day for a tiny audience. Americans 65 and older are projected to more than DOUBLE by 2050. Double. That is not a niche. That is the market, the care system, the family calendar, the pharmacy counter... all of it changing in plain sight.

Anthony Pero

The word I'd use is warning. Not in a doom-and-gloom way, but in a system-readiness way. When a population that size shifts, every assumption in healthcare gets stress-tested. And older adults already run into delayed access to therapy because somebody, somewhere, decides they're too frail, too clinically complex, or maybe not able to pay. What's frustrating is those are often assumptions made ABOUT them, not insights drawn FROM their actual care journey.

Andie Cartwright

And that "too clinically complex" phrase does so much damage, right? Because complexity isn't a reason to look away. It's the reason to look closer. You and I both know this population takes, on average, SIX medications. Six. So when people talk about older adults like they're somehow outside the mainstream treatment conversation, I'm like... outside? They're navigating some of the most intense, real-world medication and care-management situations in healthcare.

Anthony Pero

Exactly. Six medications is not a side note -- it's a care reality. And it points to something else: this is a major therapeutic and economic landscape. Branded drug sales in this population represent about $20 billion annually. So if access is delayed, that's not just a commercial miss. It's a patient-outcome miss at scale. We end up with people waiting longer for standards of care because of outdated beliefs about whether they'll benefit or tolerate treatment.

Andie Cartwright

I think that's why the phrase "healthy aging" can get a little too polished for me. It can sound like the goal is just... not getting sick, which is not how life works. Healthy aging, to me, is more practical. Can you get out of bed safely? Can you dress yourself? Can you keep your routines, your dignity, your choices? It is function, independence, quality of life. It's not some glossy wellness brochure.

Anthony Pero

When you say function, are you thinking about activities of daily living specifically? Because that's where this gets really concrete for me. People hear "quality of life" and it can sound vague. But ADLs -- bathing, dressing, mobility, eating -- those are measurable. Those are not abstract ideals.

Andie Cartwright

Yes, exactly that. ADLs are the difference between "doing okay" and "quietly slipping." And honestly, from a marketing and storytelling angle, that's the part healthcare sometimes undersells. We jump to disease labels, but families feel the day-to-day changes first. A little more confusion. More help needed. Less stamina. If you're not tracking those practical signals, you miss what healthy aging actually looks like in real life.

Anthony Pero

And in long-term and post-acute care, those signals are everywhere if you're willing to see them. That's why this observance matters. National Senior Health & Fitness Day can be cheerful on the surface -- and it should be -- but underneath it is a very serious question: are we building a healthcare system around the real needs of a population that is growing fast, living longer, and too often treated like an exception?

Andie Cartwright

Right -- because by 2050, "older adults" is not a sidebar. It's not a campaign theme for one day in May. It's one of the central design constraints for healthcare. Or maybe design opportunity is the better phrase. Depends whether we act.

Anthony Pero

And that's where data becomes the bridge. If you have continuously updated, longitudinal data across long-term and post-acute care, you can finally see what older and vulnerable patients actually experience over time -- not just a single visit, not just a claim, not just one acute event. We're talking about more than 15 million unique patients, a decade of longitudinal data, roughly 9 billion daily vitals records, almost 2 billion ADL records, and more than 73 million MDS records. That density matters because this population doesn't live in snapshots.

Andie Cartwright

The 9 BILLION daily vitals records is the one that sticks for me. That's not "we checked in occasionally." That's a pulse -- literally -- on what care looks like day to day. Blood pressure, blood sugar, oxygen saturation, pain, pulse, respiration, temperature, weight... and then layered with ADLs and assessments. That's how you stop guessing what burden of disease really looks like.

Anthony Pero

Yes, and add the frequency: 35 or more daily observations per patient, with weekly updates. Near real-time. So now you can study disease burden, unmet need, comorbidities, symptom onset and resolution, treatment patterns, and outcomes in populations that are often missing from traditional research. Respiratory, rheumatology, urological, neurological conditions, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy -- these are long, messy, real journeys. You need data that can handle "messy."

Andie Cartwright

Let me push on that, because "rich data" is one of those phrases everybody says. Why is this actually different? Why isn't this just bigger for the sake of being bigger?

Anthony Pero

Fair question. Bigger alone is useless. The difference is continuity and setting. Seniors are often underrepresented in clinical trials because of comorbidities and unique circumstances. But in long-term care, they're being monitored continuously. So instead of isolated events, you get resident data, cognitive assessments like BIMS and CPS, depression measures like PHQ-9, nursing assessments like ADL and functional scores, visits and stays, hospital transfers, diagnoses, lab results, medication orders and administration, allergies, falls, immunizations. It's the arc of care, not a postcard from one moment.

Andie Cartwright

"Not a postcard" is good. Because commercialization teams, clinical teams, HEOR teams -- they all need the movie, not the still image. If you're planning a trial, you need protocol validation and site selection that reflect where these patients actually are. If you're doing post-market work, you need to understand adverse events, burden of care, and quality of life over time. And if you're trying to launch or grow a therapy, you need to know diagnosis trends, prescription patterns, switching behavior, even off-label prescribing. Otherwise you're basically wandering into the fog.

Anthony Pero

Into fog is exactly right. And commercially, the data can get very practical, very fast. Where are new residents eligible for therapy? Which territories are competitor brands leading in? Has outreach actually driven switches? Who are the brand champions? How many orders are being started or discontinued? If your data is updated within a week of capture, you can act while the market is still moving -- not months after the window closes.

Andie Cartwright

And from my side, that's the part people underestimate: better data doesn't just make a prettier dashboard. It changes execution. A market overview dashboard can align a sales force by territory. Orders views can reveal where the sales cycle is breaking down. Provider alerts can flag diagnoses or medication orders daily so teams can respond. That's not abstract analytics. That's "did the therapy reach the person who needed it, when it mattered?"

Anthony Pero

And clinically, it sharpens evidence where the evidence gap has been stubborn. Trial feasibility. Comparative effectiveness. Epidemiology. Label expansion. Post-market surveillance. Health economics and outcomes research. When you can follow older adults across settings and over time, you stop treating age as a blind spot. You start seeing how care is delivered, where it stalls, and what better looks like.

Andie Cartwright

Which brings us back to healthy aging. If we really mean function, independence, and quality of life, then we have to look at the real patient journey with enough clarity to do something about it. Not once a year on May 27. Every week. Every update. Every signal.

Anthony Pero

So maybe that's the question we leave people with: if older and vulnerable patients are finally visible in this kind of detail -- their vitals, their ADLs, their therapy journeys, their unmet needs -- what excuse do we have left for making them wait?

Andie Cartwright

Wow! What a great question to end on! Anthony, before we end today, I want to remind our listeners that accessing our data is as easy as signing up for Study Buddy, our new AI-powered research tool!

Anthony Pero

That’s right, Andie. Right now, our listeners can sign up for free access to Study Buddy! Simply sign up a the link in today’s episode description. Alright, this brings us to the end of today’s episode. Thanks, Andie.

Andie Cartwright

Thanks, Anthony. We'll see everyone next week on the Better Living Through Data podcast! Bye Everyone!