The Attitudes, Expectations and Needs of Elderly People in Relation to E-Health Applications: Results from a European Survey

Abstract

We have carried out a survey of elderly people in Europe relating to e-health and telemedicine issues. Telephone-based interview techniques were used in 13 countries and face-to-face interviews were used in Ireland and Portugal, where there are significant numbers of houses without telephones. Altogether 9661 interviews were performed. Most respondents (65%) lived in rural areas or small towns; the remainder lived in suburban areas or large towns. Virtually all respondents (98%) had access to a television set. About 30% received cable television and 13% had access to digital television. Almost half (48%) had access to mobile phones (with 42% actually using them), 36% had access to PCs (with 27% being active users) and 22% had access to the Internet (with 17% being active users). The respondents showed interest in various e-health applications, although this declined considerably with age. The survey showed that the older people get, the more they depend on medical and social care, and the more they tend to live alone, without a family member to look after them. Policy measures relating to infrastructure as well as training, education and awareness activities will be required to avoid a medical divide between those senior citizens who have access to advanced medical advice and services and those who do not.

The value of a Patient Access Portal in primary care: a cross-sectional survey of 62,486 registered users in the UK

“…Based on findings and/or insights from previous studies [1,[14][15][16][17], we posited that survey responses were likely to be influenced by the reported age group (< 21 years, 21 to < 65 years, 65 to < 75 years, 75+ years), number of LTCs (nil, one, two, three+) and services used in the PAP (online appointment booking, medication request, patient messaging and medical record viewing). We tabulated all the results by the number of LTCs.…”

Understanding patients

“…Patients are already today interested in accessing their health data [17,18]. Both for individual social (improved medical outcome, quality of life, empowerment of patients) and economic reasons (pressures to contain costs in the health system; ageing of our societies) we expect strong support for this concept in coming years.…”

“…Insofar, a telephone is only suited as an 'intermediate' access device for other modes of presentations via a fax machine or a screen. PC/laptop: A computer is not unusual in the household these days, and even old people get more and more into using them, also for accessing the Internet and its Web services [17]. One of the involved patients, who is almost 80 years old, turned out to be very computer literate, and not surprisingly his preferred access medium is his PC.…”

“…But as a TV set is available in all households and more than 40% even of older people are used to accessing information via teletext [17], it is not surprising that they would, in principle, very much favour such an access device (except for those being used to a computer).…”

Website design attributes for retrieving health information by older adults: an application of architectural criteria

“…A telephone-based interview survey involving more than 9,000 people above the age of 50 years in Europe by Stroetmann et al [46] revealed that about 22% of the survey sample had access to the Internet and about 38% of the sample expressed an interest in retrieving health information from the Internet. This low level of interest in the Internet technology may lead to a 'medical divide', to quote Stroetmann et al [46], and in order to avoid this, measures are needed to cater for the specific needs and expectations of older adults who may perceive the Internet as a difficult medium to use. With this background, the following hypothesis is proposed in this paper:…”