Factors that influence older people’s engagement with digital health technology
Intended for healthcare professionals
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Factors that influence older people’s engagement with digital health technology

Katherine Curtis Associate professor, Faculty of Health and Social Sciences, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, Dorset, England
Kyle Price Third-year physiotherapy student, Bournemouth University, Bournemouth, Dorset, England

Digital health technology (DHT) encompasses a wide range of applications and interventions with the potential to address the health needs of an increasingly ageing population. Older people’s engagement with DHT depends on many factors, and this article summarises understanding of the barriers and facilitators to DHT uptake and continued use among older people. Older people’s confidence in using digital technology, their perceptions of personal benefit from DHT, its design, and the support they receive from health professionals and carers in using DHT all affect their level of engagement. Understanding these barriers and facilitators among the older population creates ways to enable greater numbers to benefit from DHT. This article provides information for those who work with, or design digital health interventions for, older people to help them to influence older people’s engagement with these rapidly evolving healthcare innovations.

Nursing Older People. 29, 10, 27-30. doi: 10.7748/nop.2017.e986

Correspondence

kcurtis@bournemouth.ac.uk

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Conflict of interest

None declared

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Received: 09 August 2017

Accepted: 18 October 2017

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