The effect of m-health applications on self-care improvement in older adults: A systematic review

ABSTRACT

Participants

Four electronic databases were searched on March 6, 2020 including Scopus, PubMed, ISI, and Embase

Methods

Our search consisted of concepts of “self-care,” “elderly” and “Mobile device.” English journal papers and, RCTs conducted for individuals older than 60 in the last 10 years were included. A narrative approach was used to synthesize the data due to the heterogeneous nature of the data.

Results

Initially, 3047 studies were obtained and finally 19 studies were identified for deep analysis. 13 outcomes were identified in m-health interventions to help older adults’ self-care. Each outcome has at least one or more positive results. The psychological status and clinical outcome measures were all significantly improved.

Conclusion

According to the findings, it is not possible to draw a definite positive decision about the effectiveness of interventions on older adults because the measures are very diverse and have been measured with different tools. However, it might be declared that m-health interventions have one or more positive results and can be used along with other interventions to improve the health of older adults.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile technology
• M-health
• Self-management
• aging

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all those who helped us in the implementation of the research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17538157.2023.2171878

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.