Intrinsic Capacity and Active and Healthy Ageing domains supported by personalized digital coaching: an EU-Japan survey among geriatricians to map the future direction of e-health interventions designed for older adults. (Preprint)

Abstract

The worldwide ageing trend requires conceptually new prevention, care and innovative living solutions to support human-based care using smart technology and concerns the whole globe nowadays. Enabling access to active and healthy ageing through personalised digital coaching services like physical activity coaching, cognitive training, emotional wellbeing, social connection, etc., for older adults in real life could offer valuable advantages to both individuals and societies. A starting point might be the analysis of geriatricians’ perspectives on such technologies. The perspective of the experts in the sector may allow the individualization of areas of improvement of the clinical interventions, supporting the positive perspective pointed out by the framework of Intrinsic Capacity.

The overall aim of this study is to explore the cross-national perspectives and experiences of geriatricians in the field of intrinsic capacity and how it can be supported by e-health interventions. To our knowledge, this is the first study to explore geriatric care providers’ perspectives about technology based interventions to support the IC.

A survey with geriatricians/clinical experts in the field of Intrisic Capacity and Active and Healthy Ageing was conducted in Italy, France, Germany and Japan between August and September 2021.

The qualitative findings point out relevant domains for the e-health interventions and provide examples for successful practices that support subjective wellbeing under the framework of Intrinsic Capacity: the benefits offered by personalized interventions, especially by promoting health literacy but avoiding intrusiveness. Moreover, e-health intervention could be also intended and used as the bridge that facilitates and enables social engagement and as an instrument that facilitates the communication between the doctors and the patients as well as a tool to enrich the monitoring actions by the medical staff.

There is an unexplored and significant role for such a geriatric perspective to help the development process as well as to evaluate the evidence-based results on the effectiveness of technologies for the older people. This could be effectively possible only when clinicians collaborate with data scientists, engineers, and developers in order to match the complex needs that older adults face daily.

Not Applicable.