Exploring the Potential of Emerging Technologies to Meet the Care and Support Needs of Older People: A Delphi Survey

Abstract

Some emerging technologies have potential to address older people’s care and support needs. However, there is still a gap in the knowledge on the potential uses of these technologies in some care domains. Therefore, a two-round Delphi survey was conducted to establish a consensus of opinion from a group of health and social technology experts (n = 21) on the potential of 10 emerging technologies to meet older people’s needs in five care and support domains. Experts were also asked to provide reasons for their choices in free-text spaces. The consensus level was set at 70%. Free-text responses were analyzed using thematic analysis. Voice activated devices was the technology that reached experts consensus in all assessed care domains. Some technologies (e.g., Artificial intelligence (AI) enabled apps and wearables and Internet of things (IoT) enabled homes) also show potential to support basic self-care and access to healthcare needs of older people. However, most of the remaining technologies (e.g., robotics, exoskeletons, virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR)) face a range of technical and acceptability issues that may hinder their adoption by older people in the near future. Findings should encourage the R & D community to address some of the identified challenges to improve the adoption of emerging technologies by older people.

Perceptions and Needs of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care to Increase Adoption: Scoping Review

“…Of the 26 studies, 3 (12%) studies highlighted the advantage of AI being constantly available without restrictions such as physical location, time, and access to a structured treatment [ 24 , 30 , 38 ]; 3 (12%) other studies also mentioned the appreciation of respondents for how an AI system could collect data remotely in a nonintrusive and user-friendly manner [ 23 , 24 , 28 ]. These studies mostly represented the perceptions of consumers and health care providers [ 24 , 30 , 38 ] ( Multimedia Appendix 3 ).…”

“…This could be related to concerns over the lack of integration and synthesis of information from various sources, standardization of data collection, and the overall sustainability of AI-assisted health care service delivery [ 40 , 45 ]. However, 8% (2/26) of studies reported that respondents had similar trust in AI as compared with a human physician’s diagnoses [ 28 , 45 ]. Possible mitigation strategies include increasing system transparency and reporting system accuracies [ 26 , 46 ].…”

“…Overall, 15% (4/26) of studies described the need to improve user experience to increase user engagement with AI [ 23 , 25 , 28 , 31 ]. Strategies include needs-based interaction timing, the use of suitable verbal and nonverbal expressions, interconnectedness with other information sources (eg, electronic health record), apps (eg, calendar), and devices (eg, smart home technology–enabled devices).…”

“…Sample sizes for studies with human subject responses ranged from 11 to 2780, and secondary data (ie, journal articles and app reviews) ranged from 31 to 1826 [22][23][24]. Interestingly, 19% (5/26) of studies focused on the use of chatbots in health care [23][24][25][26][27] and 31% (8/26) of studies measured acceptability using questionnaires, surveys, interviews [25,26,[28][29][30][31][32][33], and the discrete choice experiment (Multimedia Appendix 4 [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]34,36,37,39,[41][42][43][44]47]) [34]. All the studies showed at least moderate acceptability, or >50% of the participants showed acceptance toward the use of AI in health care, albeit only for minor conditions [26].…”

Exoskeletons in Nursing and Healthcare: A Bionic Future

“…For instance, wearable robotics have been tried in patients with spinal cord injury ( Chisholm et al, 2016 ; Gagnon et al, 2019 ), multiple sclerosis ( Drużbicki et al, 2021 ), stroke ( Singh et al, 2021 ), osteoarthritis ( McGibbon et al, 2021 ; Papi et al, 2016 ), and robotic assistive devices are being developed and deployed with older adults ( Verrusio et al, 2018 ) among others. A recent Delphi survey about emerging technologies for older adult care also identified informal carers as a population that could benefit from the use of exoskeletons, given the hands on role they play in providing care for loved ones who are chronically unwell or terminally ill ( Abdi et al, 2021 ). Hence, nurses could work with carers when discharging patients from hospital or assessing their home care needs in the community, to determine if a wearable robot could support family members in their day-to-day caring roles.…”