Senior Living Ctos balance efficiency, Human Touch in Tech Rollouts 

Senior living providers are using technology to create more personalized experiences for older adults as they adopt to trends like AI.

That’s according to Ziegler’s second Chief Technology Officer Hotline report, released last week, which chronicled how those execs feel about and are using technology in daily operations.

One top takeaway is that operators are using technology ito support staff, improve operations and create better resident engagement opportunities while prioritizing human touch.

Seventy-seven percent of respondents said creating operational efficiency was the top priority for embarking on new technology initiatives in 2026, alongside improving quality of care (48%) and general opportunities in deploying AI (32%).

Another 76% of respondents cited fragmentation among technology platforms as an issue their organizations face in creating a holistic technology experience for staff and residents.

AI use continues to grow among senior living providers and 59% said they intend to update their strategic IT plan on an annual or sometimes more frequent basis. Sixty-eight percent of respondents said data integration was the top use case for AI in senior living in 2026.

Organizations plan to invest more this year in large language model AI use (65%) along with creating data analytics platforms (52%), according to the report.

But confidence in deploying AI systems appears to have dipped from last year’s survey. Roughly 38% of respondents said they were “somewhat confident in targeted use cases” to meaningfully deploy AI, compared to 49% last year. Forty-one percent of respondents said their main concern around AI use in operations revolves around legal and regulatory compliance, which is unchanged from last year’s survey.

Eighty-five percent of respondents said AI could help create operational efficiency in their organizations, followed by 68% saying it could be used to integrate data across multiple platforms and 64% saying it could help improve predictive analytics in operations, according to the report. Regarding automation, enthusiasm for it has “decreased,” potentially due to more CTOs pivoting to focus on AI initiatives, the report states. When asked about fall detection, 76% of providers said they do not partner on technology surrounding falls and 83% said they also do not have a passive monitoring technology partner, the report states.

At an enterprise level, 55% of CTOs said they have “some teams with capabilities” in AI understanding and competence across their organizations compared to 13% last year.

Cybersecurity also continues to grow as an area of focus for senior living providers, with 81% of respondents citing “comprehensive” measures in cybersecurity to protect against digital threats, compared to 73% last year.

IT infrastructure, especially Wi-Fi connectivity, remains a top issue for senior living providers and the bandwidth is “not a luxury, but a basic utility” given the number of tech-savvy older adults joining senior living communities today. Nearly half, 49%, of respondents said they maintained “very strong and consistent, campuswide” Wi-Fi services, while 33% said their Wi-Fi bandwidth was “pretty strong and consistent, campuswide,” according to the survey.

The top barriers for organizations to implement new technology systems include staff capacity or expertise (49%), followed by funding (46%), time constraints (46%) and 40% cited resistance to change.

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