e-Health Interventions for Healthy Aging: A Systematic Review

Abstract

BackgroundHealthy aging (HA) is a contemporary challenge for population health worldwide. Electronic health (e-Health) interventions have the potential to support empowerment and education of adults aged 50 and over. Objectives To summarize evidence on the effectiveness of e-Health interventions on HA and explore how specific e-Health interventions and their characteristics effectively impact HA.MethodsA systematic review was conducted based on the Cochrane Collaboration methods including any experimental study design published in French, Dutch, Spanish and English from 2000 to 2018. Results Fourteen studies comparing various e-Health interventions to multiple components controls were included. In almost all the cases, e-Health interventions have strengthened or improved altogether physical activity outcome (e.g. walking), psychological outcome (e.g. memory) and promoted healthy behavior (e.g. healthy eating). Finally, significant improvements in clinical parameters (e.g. blood pressure) were found.ConclusionsThis systematic review synthesizes current evidence on the effectiveness of e-Health interventions in supporting HA.

Effect of eHealth to increase physical activity in healthy adults over 55 years: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Provide age‐adapted information about the functioning of ICT plays a key role for the success of eHealth intervention, since it facilitates the technology adoption by older people. The lack of instructions and knowledge, the cost and complexity of ICT and the lack of social interaction and communication are the core of an eHealth intervention in this age group and must be considered to design a successful eHealth intervention program 15 …”

“…Electronic health (eHealth) is conceived as a cost‐effective and safe use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in support of health and health‐related fields, as well as knowledge and research 10,11 . Currently, with the development of ICTs, eHealth interventions appear to be a useful tool for increasing PA levels 12‐14 because they are able to provide health and social care at home for all people, and especially with limited mobility such as older people, facilitating the empowerment and education of this age group 15 . The potential advantages of eHealth tools include more accessible information, enhanced compliance, optimization of practitioners´ workload, continuous feedback from experts, and scalability to populations that might not otherwise come into contact with traditional PA interventions 13,16 …”

“…The impressive increase in the life expectancy experienced in recent decades has been accompanied by a parallel increase in the prevalence of chronic health disorders that could lead to the collapse of the health system, making traditional face‐to‐face interventions less viable, given the large burden on personnel and resources 15 . Given that the use of ICTs has been increasing over the years among adults over 55 years worldwide, 17‐19 the implementation of eHealth interventions may represent an important step for improving health‐related behaviors in this growing population.…”

“…Although previous systematic reviews 12‐15 and meta‐analysis 20,21 suggested that eHealth interventions may be useful in promoting PA in adults over 55 years in the short term, these studies have not shown separately the effect on healthy adults and older adults only, nor the effect depending on the PA measurement method (accelerometer or questionnaire), nor the effect on moderate‐to‐vigorous PA, to determine whether eHealth is a useful tool to promote PA according to WHO recommendations; moreover, some of them include patients with some disorders that negatively influence the aerobic capacity, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and healthy people, which threatens the validity of their estimates 20 . Thus, the aim of this systematic review and meta‐analysis was to analyze the effect of eHealth interventions to increase PA levels (steps/day, daily MVPA, weekly total PA, and weekly MVPA) among healthy adults over 55 years.…”

Barriers and facilitators to the use of e-health by older adults: a scoping review

“…This creates significant potential to better support the health care needs of older aged adults within the current limitations of our health service systems. To date, two systematic reviews have explored the benefits of e-health for older adults, finding clinically significant improvements in health behaviors (increased physical activity and healthy eating) as well as psychological and health outcomes (memory and blood pressure) [23,24] associated with the use of these technologies.…”