This MEDTECH NAVIGATOR Report provides a landscape assessment of the innovations under development in the area of healthy ageing and elderly care.
The report will be relevant to SME’s based in the UK and to those based further afield.
The UK Elderly Population in Statistics The world’s population is ageing at a rapid rate and it is predicted that by 2050 one in five people will be over 60. The number aged over 80 is projected to triple from 143 million in 2019 to 426 million in 2050. While every older person is different, physical and mental capacity tend to slow-down with increasing age. While we can’t halt this process, there are many steps individuals can take to keep fit and independent well into their later years. For this paper, older or elderly refer to those over the age of 65.
According to statistics gathered by Age UK from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the UK has an ageing population , with nearly 12 million (11,989,322) people aged 65 and above in the UK of which:
- 5.4 million people are aged 75+,
- 1.6 million are aged 85+,
- Over 500,000 people are 90+
- 14,430 are centenarians
The number of centenarians living in the UK has increased 85% in the past 15 years and by 2030 it is estimated there will be over 21,000 centenarians. Perhaps the most striking statistic is that an additional 8.6 million people aged 65 years and over (roughly equivalent to the population size of London) are expected to live in the UK by the year 2070. By 2030, one in five people in the UK (21.8%) will be aged 65 or over, 6.8% will be aged 75+ and 3.2% will be aged 85+ . The 85+ age group is the fastest growing and is set to double to 3.2 million by mid-2041 and treble by 2066 (5.1 million; 7% of the UK population) .
