Background Aging is becoming a major global challenge. Compared with younger adults, the older population has greater health needs but faces inadequate access to appropriate, affordable, and high-quality health care. Telehealth can remove geographic and time boundaries, as well as enabling socially isolated and physically homebound people to access a wider range of care options. The impacts of different telehealth interventions in terms of their effectiveness, cost, and acceptability in aging care are still unclear. Objective This scoping review of systematic reviews aimed to provide an overview of the domains of telehealth implemented in aging care; synthesize evidence of telehealth’s feasibility, effectiveness, cost benefits, and acceptability in the context of aging care; identify gaps in the literature; and determine the priorities for future research. Methods Guided by the methodological framework of the Joanna Briggs Institute, we reviewed systematic reviews concerning all types of telehealth interventions involving direct communication between older users and health care providers. In total, 5 major electronic databases, PubMed, Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Library, CINAHL, and PsycINFO (EBSCO), were searched on September 16, 2021, and an updated search was performed on April 28, 2022, across the same databases as well as the first 10 pages of the Google search. Results A total of 29 systematic reviews, including 1 post hoc subanalysis of a previously published large Cochrane systematic review with meta-analysis, were included. Telehealth has been adopted in various domains in aging care, such as cardiovascular diseases, mental health, cognitive impairment, prefrailty and frailty, chronic diseases, and oral health, and it seems to be a promising, feasible, effective, cost-effective, and acceptable alternative to usual care in selected domains. However, it should be noted that the generalizability of the results might be limited, and further studies with larger sample sizes, more rigorous designs, adequate reporting, and more consistently defined outcomes and methodologies are needed. The factors affecting telehealth use among older adults have been categorized into individual, interpersonal, technological, system, and policy levels, which could help direct collaborative efforts toward improving the security, accessibility, and affordability of telehealth as well as better prepare the older population for digital inclusion. Conclusions Although telehealth remains in its infancy and there is a lack of high-quality studies to rigorously prove the feasibility, effectiveness, cost benefit, and acceptability of telehealth, mounting evidence has indicated that it could play a promising complementary role in the care of the aging population.

Background Understanding older people’s health-seeking behavior (HSB) is crucial for uncovering their health needs and priorities and developing appropriate policies to address them and avert their disease progression. Technologies play an active role in our daily lives and have been incorporated into health activities to support the older population and facilitate their HSB. However, previous studies of HSB have mainly focused on behaviors during illness, and there are limited studies on how technologies have been used in older people’s health-seeking activities. Objective This study aimed to investigate HSB and the associated technology use among the older population, ultimately proposing implications for practice to address their unmet health needs. Methods This paper presents partial data from a large qualitative study, which has been approved by the institutional review board and used a phenomenological approach. Semistructured interviews were conducted between April 2022 and July 2022, either via Zoom (Zoom Video Communications Inc) or face-to-face sessions. Inclusion criteria were being aged ≥50 years, long-term residence in Singapore, and being able to speak English or Mandarin. The interviews were manually transcribed verbatim, and thematic analysis was performed, with the individual as the unit of analysis to understand the patterns of behaviors. Results In total, 15 interviews were conducted to reach thematic saturation. We identified 5 main consequences of HSB, which were aligned with the original HSB model. Regarding technology use in health seeking, 4 themes were extracted: the most widely used digital technologies are the mobile health apps and wearable devices with the associated wellness programs launched by the government and local companies, and they have the potential to enhance health communication, promote health maintenance, and increase access to health services; information communication technologies and social media, though not primarily designed for health purposes, play a substantial role in easing the process of seeking health information and managing symptoms. Although the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in some alterations to older adults’ well-being, it has catalyzed the adoption of telehealth as a complement to access health care services, and older adults have different considerations when selecting technologies to facilitate their health seeking and fulfill their health needs. Moreover, 4 archetypes were proposed based on our findings and the insights gained from our participants’ observations in their social networks. These findings led to several implications for practice regarding health communication and promotion, health education, technology design and improvement, telemonitoring service implementation, and solutions to address the needs of each proposed archetype. Conclusions Unlike the commonly held belief that older adults resist technologies and lack technological proficiency, our findings showed that technologies could play a promising role in facilitating older adults’ health seeking. Our findings have implications for the design and implementation of health services and policies.

BACKGROUND Population aging is a global phenomenon, and older people may have a possible increase in seeking health services. Digital technologies such as smartwatches, mobile apps, exergames, and telemedicine, have progressively permeated our life and have become increasingly popular in supporting the aging population and facilitating healthy aging. Understanding older people’s health-seeking behavior is crucial to uncover their health needs and priorities, as well as developing appropriate policies to address these needs and avert their disease progression. However, research on health-seeking behavior in literature largely focused on behavior during illness episodes, and there is a scarcity of studies on how digital technologies were utilized in older adults’ health-seeking behavior. OBJECTIVE Following Chin and Kramer’s definition and Pootaghi et al.’s defining attributes, health-seeking behavior in our study is a multi-faceted concept encompassing 1) day-to-day efforts to maintain their physical, mental, and social well-being, 2) responses to symptoms, 3) access to the health system, and 4) health information-seeking. Our study aimed to investigate how community-dwelling older adults in Singapore utilized digital technologies in their health-seeking behavior. METHODS This study has been approved by the Institutional Review Board. A semi-structured interview approach was used in this qualitative study that spanned April 2022 to July 2022, either on Zoom or in person. Inclusion criteria included being aged 50 and above, long-term residing in Singapore, and being able to speak English or Mandarin. Community outreach and social media recruitment strategies were adopted for participant recruitment. The interviews were manually transcribed verbatim anonymously, and a thematic analysis was performed. RESULTS A total of 15 interviews were conducted at thematic saturation. Digital technologies have been playing a substantial role in all aspects of our participants’ HSB, and almost everyone had consciously or subconsciously used some form of digital technologies to facilitate their self-monitoring, manage medical appointments and review test results, improve access to healthcare services, and seek and share health information. We also identified five different factors affecting the participants’ preference and judgment for health education (i.e., the professionalism of the instructor, the language used by the instructor, the usefulness and relevance of the content, cost, and personal interest) and eight considerations when selecting mobile health applications (i.e., perceived usefulness, the comprehensiveness of features, perceived ease of use, performance and quality, recommendations by the social network, cost, rewards, and reliability). CONCLUSIONS The results of our study counter the stereotype that older adults reject technologies and are technologically disadvantaged. Our findings also have implications for policies and healthcare models to view the different dimensions of HSB holistically to better understand and address the unmet health needs of community-dwelling older adults.

BACKGROUND Global ageing is becoming a major global challenge. Older adults often have greater health needs compared to the younger generation but are facing inadequate access to appropriate, affordable, and high-quality health care. Telehealth can remove the geographic and time boundaries, as well as enabling the socially isolated and physically homebound people to access a wider range of care options. A variety of telehealth interventions have been designed and applied in different settings to older people with different health conditions, but the results regarding their feasibility, effectiveness, cost, and acceptability were not consistent. OBJECTIVE This review aims to consolidate the evidence of telehealth's feasibility, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and acceptability in the context of ageing care, identify gaps in the literature, and determine the priorities for future research. METHODS Guided by the methodological framework of the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI), we reviewed systematic reviews concerning all types of telehealth interventions involving direct communication between older users and healthcare providers. Five major electronic databases, PubMed, Embase (Ovid), Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and PsycINFO (EBSCO) were searched on 16th September 2021, and an updated search was performed on 28th April 2022 across the same databases as well as the first ten pages of the Google search. RESULTS 29 systematic reviews including one post-hoc sub-analysis of a previously published large Cochrane systematic review with meta-analysis were included. We summarized the domains, as well as evidence of the feasibility, effectiveness, cost, and acceptability of telehealth. Having better-designed telehealth interventions, improved telehealth policies and regulations, as well as more high-quality and rigorous future research is crucial to strengthening the research evidence and addressing the increasingly multi-faceted health needs of older adults. CONCLUSIONS Though telehealth remains in its infancy and there is a lack of high-quality studies to rigorously prove the feasibility, effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and acceptability of telehealth, mounting evidence has indicated that it is playing an important complementary role in the care of the ageing population.