From June 17 to 21, 2024, I joined the 12th Plenary Meeting and working group sessions of ISO Technical Committee 314 on Ageing Societies — held in London and attended virtually by delegates from around the world.
The Committee currently has five international standards under development. They span a remarkable range of concerns: delivering greater welfare in community and home settings, building and refining cross-generational neighbour relationships, establishing frameworks for home-based and community-based elderly care, enabling smart ageing-in-place through technology, and defining guidelines for ageing-inclusive digital economies.
Five standards. Five different lenses. Yet they all converge on a single, stubborn challenge: terminology.
As societies evolve at accelerating speed and technology remakes itself every few months, new concepts arrive faster than language can settle. Old terms acquire new meanings. A word that meant one thing a decade ago now carries entirely different connotations. In the domain of ageing, this is especially acute — because the vocabulary we use shapes the policies we design, the services we deliver, and ultimately, the dignity we afford.
How do you establish definitions that hold across cultures, languages, and regulatory systems? How do you translate a concept like "smart ageing-in-place" into a term that resonates equally in Tokyo, Nairobi, and Copenhagen? This is not merely editorial work. It is technical work of the highest order — patient, precise, and deeply collaborative.
The meeting reminded me that standards are, at their core, agreements about meaning. Before we can measure, certify, or regulate, we must first agree on what we are talking about. And in a field as human as ageing, that agreement is never just technical. It is philosophical.