NEW YORK – U.S. startups focusing on care products and services for the elderly are tapping into the graying Japanese market, where more than 35 million people are over the age of 65. Seismic, a California-based apparel company, hopes to expand in Japan with its Powered Clothing, a body suit using robotics and sensor technology inside the garment to mimic human movements and increase strength. The body suit is meant for all ages, but Seismic has found particular success with elderly people who enjoy sports and travel in the United States, where the population is also graying. The number of people age 65 and older in the United States is projected to grow from 52 million in 2018 to 95 million by 2060, according to the Population Reference Bureau. In November, Seismic partnered with Obayashi Corp. to provide its construction workers with the suits.

Often, the phrase "digital health" conjures images of smart watches or apps that process your health data to give a readout of a parameter like heart rate. That is part of digital health, to be sure, but at the Big Data in Precision Health conference last week, four speakers during the last session of the conference offered a much more expansive vision for digital health technologies. They discussed robotics, precision mental health and personal behaviors in health practices -- the ever-elusive key to actually making changes in your own health. "Despite the mass amounts of data that we have today, we've still yet to understand how to change [health] behavior," said Jennifer Schneider, MD, the chief medical officer at Livongo, a company that develops products tailored to individuals with chronic diseases, such as devices that monitor blood sugar and provide personalized reminders to people with diabetes. But in areas such as mental health, it's not always easy to know what actions to take, even if you are motivated.

Yves Béhar is a name that we have dropped before. We mentioned him as the talent behind the Jawbone UP2. Since then the Swiss designer, entrepreneur and founder of Fuseproject has been busy. His latest work is a collaboration with Superflex, a company that is all about defining the future of movement through Powered Clothing. Coming together in an innovative way, the twosome have designed a power suit that helps elderly people stand and walk more easily.