Acceptance of Health-Related ICT among Elderly People Living in the Community: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Evidence

ABSTRACT

There are a growing number of seniors and a growing need for health-related ICT (Information and Communication Technology) solutions to allow seniors to live independently in their own homes and communities. We need to have a better understanding of how and why seniors use or do not use health-related ICT in such settings so we can improve our solutions. In order to synthesize existing knowledge, we did a systematic literature review using Scopus and PubMed. We searched for both review articles and primary qualitative studies. Eleven review articles and 31 primary research articles were included in the study. We structured our findings using the UTAUT2 acceptance model developed by Venkatesh et al. Our findings show that seniors want health-related ICT that gives them independence, safety, and security, allows them to socialize and manage their own health, and helps them in their daily activities. They need to easily get help if they have problems using services, get tailored training, and get help during use. Lack of privacy and safety and stigma are some of the reported barriers. Health-related ICT at home is different than both consumer and institutional ICT. We need more research in order to develop a specialized and operationalized acceptance model for health-related ICT use among seniors. Our mapping to UTAUT2 is a step in this direction and suggests a possible specialization of this model.

Funding

This research is partly funded by the Norwegian Research Council project ADAPT (Grant Agreement No. 317631). Lars Tore Vassli was a student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) when he contributed to this research.

Notes

¹ We searched only online and did not attempt to order article copies of these articles.

² We did not exclude quantitative studies during the initial screening because our future work includes a comparative analysis of the different methodologies. This comparison is not part of the current article.

³ We thank one of the anonymous reviewers who raised this point.

Additional information

Funding

This research is partly funded by the Norwegian Research Council project ADAPT (Grant Agreement No. 317631). Lars Tore Vassli was a student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) when he contributed to this research.

Notes on contributors

Lars Tore Vassli

Lars Tore Vassli is a developer at the Trondheim Municipality in Norway. He has an MSc degree in Informatics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Lars studied at NTNU when writing this article. He is interested in HCI and software solutions that can demonstrate high acceptance among users.

Babak A. Farshchian

Babak A. Farshchian is a senior scientist at SINTEF and an adjunct associate professor at NTNU. Babak’s interests include mobile and ubiquitous computing, collaborative technologies, and user-centered design. Babak’s research is about how information technologies can affect user empowerment. Babak is involved in projects with the elderly and people with special needs.