The increasing use of technology by older persons and their preferences for living at home and being independent have created an avenue for self-care and care delivery using mobile technologies and health communication. This study aimed to explain how older persons with cognitive impairment experienced technology-based health communication through the use of a mobile application to facilitate a sense of coherence. Individual, semi-structured interviews with 16 participants in the SMART4MD project were conducted. The interviews were transcribed then coded deductively and thematically, creating themes that corresponded to the central components of the sense of coherence model: comprehensibility, manageability, and meaningfulness. The findings produced an overall theme: a challenging technology that can provide support, based on the three identified themes: making sense of mobile technologies, mastering mobile technologies, and the potential added value to use mobile technologies. The participants’ experiences were influenced by their previous use and expectations for the application. Personal support, cognitive and physical ability, and different sources for information impacted use. The participants experienced that using the application created an ambiguity to be challenging and have possible benefits. The study suggests that the sense of coherence model may be used as a method to understand the use of technology by older populations.

Background Health communication (HC) is a vast research field focusing on changing health behaviours, and rapidly evolving technology is creating different ways and possibilities to reach target groups and audiences. In the context of home care, a deeper understanding of HC is lacking, specifically for older persons with care needs and their informal caregivers. The aim of this concept analysis is to identify and construct the meaning of HC from the perspective of older persons in need of care in the home environment and their informal caregivers. Materials and methods This study utilised Rogers’ (2000) Evolutionary Concept Analysis Method (EMCA) to create and construct a meaning of the concept of HC. The EMCA was based on a systematic literature review of scientific articles, using CINAHL, Pubmed and Inspec (2000‐2017). A total of 29 articles were retrieved and analysed. Results The identified attributes of the concept were as follows: resources of the recipient, influence on decisions and advantages of tailored information. HC was described as both contributing to knowledge as well as being overwhelming where habits and resources influenced the use of information. The attributes led to the following descriptive definition of HC: ‘Tailored HC, based on needs and resources of the recipient influence care decisions’. The home environment influenced HC by habits and interactions between older persons and their informal caregivers. Conclusions The home environment influenced HC in terms of social aspects of interactions and habits and between the older person and the informal caregiver. Tailored information with the use of technology contributed to knowledge in care of older persons and their informal caregivers. HC was shown to contribute to improve care for older people in their home environment.