JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Digital health technologies offer potential to improve the daily lives of older adults, maintain their health efficiently, and allow aging in place. Despite increasing evidence of benefits and advantages, readiness for adopting digital interventions among the elderly remains underexplored.

Objective:

This study aimed to explore the relationships between socio-demographic, health, and lifestyle-related factors and technology use in everyday life, and older adults’ readiness to adopt telemedicine, smartphones with texting applications, wearables, and robotics.

Methods:

This was a cross-sectional, population-based survey study with a stratified probabilistic sample of adults aged 75 years or older living in South Tyrol (Autonomous Province of Bolzano|Bozen, Italy). A random sample of 3,600 older adults was invited to complete a questionnaire including self-developed items (older adults’ readiness to use health technology) and scales (PRISMA-7). Descriptive and logistic regression analyses were performed to analyze the data.

Results:

In total, 1,695 older adults completed the survey (response rate = 47%). In terms of potential digital health technology adoption, wearable devices were favored by 33.7%, telemedicine by 30.1%, smartphones and texting applications by 24.5%, and assistant robots by 13.7%. Sociodemographic, health- and lifestyle-related factors, and use of technology in everyday life played a significant role in explaining readiness to adopt digital health technologies. For telemedicine, age ≥ 85 years (OR: 0.74, 95%CI: 0.56, 0.96), financial constraints (OR: 0.68, 95%CI: 0.49, 0.95), and less than two hours of physical activity per week (OR: 0.75, 95%CI: 0.58, 0.98) were associated with non-readiness, while Italian-speaking participants (OR: 1.54, 95%CI: 1.16, 2.05) and those regularly using computers (OR: 1.74, 95%CI: 1.16, 2.60), smartphones (OR: 1.69, 95%CI: 1.22, 2.35), and the Internet (OR: 2.26, 95%CI: 1.47, 3.49) reported readiness for adoption.

Conclusions:

Older adults display varied readiness toward the adoption of digital health technologies influenced by age, mother tongue, living situation, financial resources, physical activity, and current use of technology. The findings underscore the need for tailored interventions and educational programs to boost digital health technologies adoption among older adults.