Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Aging

Date Submitted: Oct 19, 2025
Date Accepted: Jun 23, 2026

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

The Ways in Which Stakeholders Make Decisions About AI and Novel Technologies for the Health Care of Older Adults: Qualitative Interview Study

Zhang Z, K.M. Cudjoe T, Ashida S, Massare J, Chae K, Phan P, Abadir P, I. Arbaje A, Unberath M, Schoenborn N

The Ways in Which Stakeholders Make Decisions About AI and Novel Technologies for the Health Care of Older Adults: Qualitative Interview Study

JMIR Aging 2026;9:e86148

DOI: 10.2196/86148

PMID: 42525445

How do stakeholders make decisions about AI and novel technologies for the healthcare of older adults? A Qualitative Interview Study

  • Zhang Zhang; 
  • Thomas K.M. Cudjoe; 
  • Sato Ashida; 
  • Jacqueline Massare; 
  • Kacey Chae; 
  • Phillip Phan; 
  • Peter Abadir; 
  • Alicia I. Arbaje; 
  • Mathias Unberath; 
  • Nancy Schoenborn

ABSTRACT

Background:

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to improve health among older adults, yet how different stakeholders decide to develop, finance, and adopt AI innovations is not well understood.

Objective:

To understand the decision-making of different stakeholders regarding AI and technologies for the healthcare of older adults.

Methods:

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 older adults/care partners, 15 clinicians, 8 health system or insurance leaders, 5 investors, and 6 technology developers. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis.

Results:

All stakeholders considered cost, value, and usability important in adopting AI health technologies, but emphasized different aspects of each concept. Older adults and care partners prioritized out-of-pocket costs and ease of use, while payers emphasized disease prevalence and implementation feasibility. Developers and investors focused on profitability and scalability, resulting in tension with end-users’ priorities. Participant suggestions include problem-driven design, greater stakeholder engagement, public–private partnerships, and educating older adults about AI.

Conclusions:

As with prior health-related technology innovations, aligning decisional priorities across stakeholders is critical to motivate impactful AI health technologies for older adults.


 Citation

Please cite as:

Zhang Z, K.M. Cudjoe T, Ashida S, Massare J, Chae K, Phan P, Abadir P, I. Arbaje A, Unberath M, Schoenborn N

The Ways in Which Stakeholders Make Decisions About AI and Novel Technologies for the Health Care of Older Adults: Qualitative Interview Study

JMIR Aging 2026;9:e86148

DOI: 10.2196/86148

PMID: 42525445

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© 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.