Mission
The Prism's mission is to accelerate the creation and evolution of AgeTech products for the aging adult ecosystem worldwide, closing maturity gaps around key product essentials: gerontology, UX, care management, responsible AI, and more.
Knowledge about building responsible, ethical technology for older adults should not be locked away or limited to those who can afford expensive consultants. The Prism provides open access to frameworks, guidance, and a global network of expertise, raising the standard for the products and services older adults depend on every day.
Access is equitable. The Prism stays open to everyone building for older adults, regardless of resources or location. Companies and organizations that can contribute help offset the cost, keeping it open for those who can't. Collaborators across the globe who share this belief make AgeTech Prism™ possible.
Creator statement
AgeTech Prism™ was conceived, designed, and written by Ezra Schwartz.
My work has always been about alignment. Every product has people on both sides of it: the company that makes it and the people who use it, the buyer and the person it is bought for, the clinician, the family member. Each has needs and motivations of their own, and something they are trying to accomplish. Between them sits the technology, and around all of it sits context: where the product is used, by whom, and how information moves from one person to the next. When those pieces line up, a product works. When they don't, it fails quietly, and usually it fails the person who could least afford it.
I care about access and fairness, and I have spent my career on user experience that takes the full range of people seriously. Aging is where that matters most because it is personal: I am aging myself, and I have lived for forty years beside an occupational therapist. AgeTech reaches into health, care, home, money, mobility, work, and connection, and I am interested in all of it.
The problem is plain. Products for older adults are mostly built without gerontology in the room, and the knowledge that would help sits behind consultants and paywalls. So the market fills with tools made for a narrow, well-resourced user. Aging is far broader than that, and so is the opportunity, for the people these products serve and for the industry that builds them.
An open, shared instrument is my answer to both.
Two people deserve my thanks. Orit Schwartz, OTR/L, my wife and partner, has challenged and shaped my thinking for decades. She shares my passion for equity and fairness, and her human-first model of care, which sees a person as a life to be lived rather than a body to be repaired, runs through every lens of the Prism. Dr. Julie Brown, gerontologist, listened when the Prism was only an idea, followed it through every turn since, and keeps its gerontology honest.
I used Claude, Anthropic's AI model, as a drafting and analysis tool throughout. Every decision and every published word is mine.