Development of a Mobile Application “Smart Silver Care” to Reduce Loneliness in Older Adults in the Community (Preprint)

Abstract

Loneliness in older adults threatens their quality of life and increases the risk of dementia, heart disease, and mortality. Non-face-to-face services are becoming necessary loneliness interventions for older adults in the community.

This study aimed to develop a mobile application as a loneliness intervention for community-dwelling older adults using the analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation (ADDIE) model.

A mobile application for community-dwelling older adults to reduce loneliness was developed using ADDIE model including a systematic review, preference survey, and experts’ evaluation. Relevant articles were searched from June 11 to 15, 2021, using six databases: Ovid-Medline, Ovid-EMBASE, Cochrane Library, KISS, KoreaMed, and RISS. Preference analysis was conducted from July 15 to August 31, 2021, on 100 adults aged 65 years or older living in the community.

The mobile application for community-dwelling older adults was developed and the contents included emo-tional support, cognition, physical activity, health measurement, nutritional management, and motivation. The contents of the mobile application were organized through a systematic review and preference survey in the analysis stage, and were designed as the main menu and sub-content in the design stage. In addition, we de-signed the structure, function, and interface layout in this stage. In the development phase, the designed content was integrated, and the application was finally developed by determining the operating system and language, access methods, privacy protection, and server recording. Subsequently, experts used and evaluated the con-tent validity of the application.

The developed mobile application included emotional support, cognition, physical activity, health measure-ment, nutritional management, and motivation, and the mobile application is expected to help older adults achieve their goals by promoting participation. The study’s results are expected to be used as a comprehensive mobile application that maintain continuity of care by considering the difficulty of implementing face-to-face services due to the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.