Needs, barriers and facilitators of older adults towards eHealth in general practice: a qualitative study

Vergouw, J.W.; Smits-Pelser, Hanneke; Kars, Marijke C; Houwelingen, Thijs van; Os‐Medendorp, Harmieke van; Kort, Helianthe; Bleijenberg, Nienke

doi:10.1017/s1463423620000547

Cited by 21 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 30 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…As Lam et al [48] have shown for older adults in the United States, telemedicine unreadiness was more common in patients who had less education and lower income. Vergouw et al [49] also identified non-familiarity with the online eHealth applications as a main barrier to access to and use of eHealth among older adults.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and Unmet Healthcare Needs of Older People: Did Inequity Arise in Europe?

González-Touya

Stoyanova

Urbanos-Garrido

2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: The disruption in healthcare provision due to the COVID-19 pandemic forced many non-urgent medical treatments and appointments to be postponed or denied, which is expected to have huge impact on non-acute health conditions, especially in vulnerable populations such as older people. Attention should be paid to equity issues related to unmet needs during the pandemic. Methods: We calculated concentration indices to identify income-related inequalities and horizontal inequity in unmet needs due to postponed and denied healthcare in people over 50 during COVID-19, using data from the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE). Results: Very few countries show significant income-related inequalities in postponed, rescheduled or denied treatments and medical appointments, usually favouring the rich. Only Estonia, Italy and Romania show a significant horizontal inequity (HI) in postponed healthcare, which apparently favours the poor. Significant pro-rich inequity in denied healthcare is found in Italy, Poland and Greece. Conclusions: Although important income-related horizontal inequity in unmet needs of European older adults during the early waves of the COVID-19 pandemic is not evident for most countries, some of them have to carefully monitor barriers to healthcare access. Delays in diagnosis and treatments may ultimately translate into adverse health outcomes, reduced quality of life and, even, widen socio-economic health inequalities among older people.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19 and Unmet Healthcare Needs of Older People: Did Inequity Arise in Europe?

González-Touya

Stoyanova

Urbanos-Garrido

2021

IJERPH

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Further, not travelling lends participants flexibility to fit interviews into tighter schedule gaps or reschedule at short notice. Also, while it used to be thought that digital data collection would bar older age groups from the research, increasing older-age familiarity with digital methods means that older participants are not significantly precluded from virtual interviewing ( Vergouw et al, 2020 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Challenge to Opportunity: Virtual Qualitative Research During COVID-19 and Beyond

Keen

Lomeli-Rodriguez

Joffe

2022

International Journal of Qualitative Methods

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

COVID-19 has required researchers to adapt methodologies for remote data collection. While virtual interviewing has traditionally received limited attention in the qualitative literature, recent adaptations to the pandemic have prompted increased discussion and adoption. Yet, current discussion has focussed on practical and ethical concerns and retained a tone of compromise, of coping in a crisis. This paper extends the nascent conversations begun prior to the pandemic to consider the wider methodological implications of video-call interviews. Beyond the short-term, practical challenges of the pandemic, these adaptations demonstrate scope for longer-term, beneficial digitalisation of both traditional and emergent interview methods. Updating traditional interview methods digitally has demonstrated how conversion to video interviewing proves beneficial in its own right. Virtual focus-group-based research during COVID-19, for example, accessed marginalised populations and elicited notable rapport and rich data, uniting people in synchronous conversation across many environments. Moreover, emergent interview methods such as the Grid Elaboration Method (a specialised free-associative method) demonstrated further digitalised enhancements, including effective online recruitment with flexible scheduling, virtual interactions with significant rapport, and valuable recording and transcription functions. This paper looks beyond the pandemic to future research contexts where such forms of virtual interviewing may confer unique advantages: supporting researcher and participant populations with mobility challenges; enhancing international research where researcher presence or travel may be problematic. When opportunities for traditional face-to-face methods return, the opportunity for virtual innovation should not be overlooked.

show abstract

“…Recommendations for addressing the timing and intensity of the behavior. Previous work on needs, barriers, and facilitators for older adults to use eHealth applications found instant availability of help through such applications to be a facilitator ( Vergouw et al, 2020 ). However, given the diversity of user needs and preferences, there appears to be a need for tailored timing and intensity of intervention components.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Users’ needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study

Albers

Neerincx

Penfornis

et al. 2022

PeerJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background Despite their increasing prevalence and potential, eHealth applications for behavior change suffer from a lack of adherence and from dropout. Advances in virtual coach technology provide new opportunities to improve this. However, these applications still do not always offer what people need. We, therefore, need a better understanding of people’s needs and how to address these, based on both actual experiences of users and their reflections on envisioned scenarios. Methods We conducted a longitudinal study in which 671 smokers interacted with a virtual coach in five sessions. The virtual coach assigned them a new preparatory activity for quitting smoking or increasing physical activity in each session. Participants provided feedback on the activity in the next session. After the five sessions, participants were asked to describe barriers and motivators for doing their activities. In addition, they provided their views on videos of scenarios such as receiving motivational messages. To understand users’ needs, we took a mixed-methods approach. This approach triangulated findings from qualitative data, quantitative data, and the literature. Results We identified 14 main themes that describe people’s views of their current and future behaviors concerning an eHealth application. These themes relate to the behaviors themselves, the users, other parties involved in a behavior, and the environment. The most prevalent theme was the perceived usefulness of behaviors, especially whether they were informative, helpful, motivating, or encouraging. The timing and intensity of behaviors also mattered. With regards to the users, their perceived importance of and motivation to change, autonomy, and personal characteristics were major themes. Another important role was played by other parties that may be involved in a behavior, such as general practitioners or virtual coaches. Here, the themes of companionableness, accountability, and nature of the other party (i.e., human vs AI) were relevant. The last set of main themes was related to the environment in which a behavior is performed. Prevalent themes were the availability of sufficient time, the presence of prompts and triggers, support from one’s social environment, and the diversity of other environmental factors. We provide recommendations for addressing each theme. Conclusions The integrated method of experience-based and envisioning-based needs acquisition with a triangulate analysis provided a comprehensive needs classification (empirically and theoretically grounded). We expect that our themes and recommendations for addressing them will be helpful for designing applications for health behavior change that meet people’s needs. Designers should especially focus on the perceived usefulness of application components. To aid future work, we publish our dataset with user characteristics and 5,074 free-text responses from 671 people.

show abstract

Needs, barriers and facilitators of older adults towards eHealth in general practice: a qualitative study

Cited by 21 publications

References 30 publications

COVID-19 and Unmet Healthcare Needs of Older People: Did Inequity Arise in Europe?

COVID-19 and Unmet Healthcare Needs of Older People: Did Inequity Arise in Europe?

From Challenge to Opportunity: Virtual Qualitative Research During COVID-19 and Beyond

Users’ needs for a digital smoking cessation application and how to address them: A mixed-methods study

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About