Use and Acceptance of Smart Elderly Care Apps Among Chinese Medical Staff and Older Individuals: Web-Based Hybrid Survey Study (Preprint)

Abstract

BACKGROUND With the advent of China's ageing population and the popularization of smartphones, there is a huge demand for smart elderly care. Not only the elderly and their dependants but also medical staff need to use the health management platform to manage the health of patients. However, the development of health apps and the large and growing app market pose a problem of declining quality; in fact, important differences can be observed between apps, and patients currently do not have adequate information and formal evidence. OBJECTIVE To investigate the cognition and usage status of smart elderly care apps among elderly individuals and medical staff in China. We collected the functions of the smart elderly care app expected by the elderly and analysed the factors related to the willingness to use the app according to the sociodemographics, medical characteristics, and the needs of the research subjects. METHODS From March 1, 2022, to March 30, 2022, we used the web survey tool Sojump to conduct snowball sampling through WeChat. The survey links were initially sent to communities in 23 representative major cities in China. We asked the staff of these communities to post the survey link on their WeChat Moments. From April 1 to May 10, 2022, we contacted those who selected "Have used the Smart Pension App" in the questionnaire through WeChat and conducted semistructured interviews with them. Participants provided informed consent in advance, and interviews were scheduled. After the interviews, the researcher transcribed the audio recordings into text and summarized the themes. RESULTS A total of 810 older adults participated in this study, among which, 54.81% were medical staff (444/810), 33.08% were elderly people (268/810), and the rest were certified nursing assistant and community workers.A total of 60.49% of the participants (490/810) had used the smart elderly care app on their smartphone. Among the 444 medical staff who participated in the study, the vast majority (313/444, 70.49%) had never used the smart elderly care apps, but 34.68% of them recommended elderly care-related apps to patients,In our study, a total of 542 medical staff, CNA, and community workers completed the questionnaire, of whom only 68 (68/542, 12.56%) had used the smart care app for older individuals. Qualitative research was conducted in these people, and we interviewed 23 people until there was "saturation" of information. Three themes and eight subthemes were analyzed. CONCLUSIONS In this survey, there was a huge difference in the usage rate and demand for smart pension apps by the participants. Respondents pay more attention to application function settings, interface simplicity and data security.