JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

This viewpoint article discusses the barriers of developing and implementing a patient-oriented frailty website as well as their potential solutions. A patient-oriented frailty website is a virtual health resource where community dwelling older adults can navigate to and answer a series of health related questions and receive an automated frailty / health evaluation with a summary score . This score can then be shared with a healthcare professional. The aim of the patient-oriented frailty website is to screen and identify older adult individuals for frailty. Our viewpoints were drawn from two discussion sessions, one comprised of 7 caregivers and care providers, and one comprised of 6 community dwelling older adults. At each discussion session, we posed open-ended questions across a series of topics centered on technology for frailty monitoring, opinions on a patient-oriented frailty website, and data privacy , among others. We then reviewed these responses for each session and summarized barriers common to each group. We report that barriers of a patient-oriented frailty website include but are not limited to: its inherent restrictiveness to frail persons, concerns over data privacy, time commitment worries, and the need for health / lifestyle resources in addition to a summary score. For each barrier we discuss potential solutions and caveats to those solutions. A patient-oriented frailty website that can not only screen and identify frail older adults, but also promote healthy aging in non-frail adults, will encourage aging in place , support real-time monitoring, and enable personalized and preventative care.