Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Oct 4, 2024
Date Accepted: May 27, 2026
The perceptions of adults over 50 regarding the use of wearable mHealth technologies to promote physical activity: a meta-ethnography.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Despite the advancement of mHealth apps and the importance of adapting them to users, little is known about their perceptions of older adults.
Objective:
To synthesize and analyze studies that explore the perceptions of adults aged 50 and above regarding areas to improve, barriers to and facilitators of mHealth applications to promote physical activity.
Methods:
This was a qualitative systematic review of meta-ethnography-type articles published from 2013 to January 2014 at Medline (PubMed), Scopus, Web of Science, CINAHL, The Cochrane Library Plus, ProQuest, and CSIC, both in English and Spanish, according to the PRISMA Declaration.
Results:
Ten articles met the inclusion criteria and were analyzed via meta-ethnography. Three main themes emerged: 1) barriers to promoting physical activity caused by mHealth apps: personal barriers (physical aspects, perceptions about technology, likes/preferences), technological barriers (functionality, content, design, alarms, availability and accessibility), and environmental barriers (season of the year); 2) personal facilitators (consideration that these apps improve health, perceptions about technology, likes/preferences), technological facilitators (functionality, content, design), relational facilitators (technological and social support), environmental facilitators (seasons of the year) and healthcare professionals (support and monitoring by healthcare services); and 3) personal areas (perceptions about technology, likes/preferences), technological areas (functionality, content and design), and relational areas (technological support).
Conclusions:
Although older adults acknowledge that mHealth apps have the potential to promote physical activity, they declare that they find personal, technological and environmental barriers to using them. There is a need for age-friendly apps adjusted to the preferences and preferences of this kind of user. Likewise, it is crucial to bridge the digital gap and to provide app users with support from healthcare professionals.
Citation
Per the author's request the PDF is not available.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.