JMIR Aging

In people with cognitive impairment, loss of social interactions has a major impact on well-being. Therefore, patients would benefit from early detection of symptoms of social withdrawal. Current measurement techniques such as questionnaires are subjective and rely on recall, in contradiction to smartphone apps, which measure social behavior passively and objectively.

Older adults experience a high risk of adverse events during hospital-to-home transitions. Implementation barriers have prevented widespread clinical uptake of the various digital health technologies that aim to support hospital-to-home transitions.

Health care aides are unlicensed support personnel who provide direct care, personal assistance, and support to people with health conditions. The shortage of health care aides has been attributed to recruitment challenges, high turnover, an aging population, the COVID-19 pandemic, and low retention rates. Mobile apps are among the many information communication technologies that are paving the way for eHealth solutions to help address this workforce shortage by enhancing the workflow of health care aides. In collaboration with Clinisys EMR Inc, we developed a mobile app (Mobile Smart Care System [mSCS]) to support the workflow of health care aides who provide services to older adult residents of a long-term care facility.

Apathy is common in people with cognitive impairment. It leads to different consequences, such as more severe cognitive deficits, rapid functional decline, and decreased quality of life. Virtual reality (VR) interventions are increasingly being used to manage apathy in individuals with cognitive impairment. However, reports of VR interventions are scattered across studies, which has hindered the development and use of the interventions.

The province of New Brunswick (NB) has one of the oldest populations in Canada, providing an opportunity to develop and test innovative strategies to address the unique health challenges faced by older adults. Passive remote monitoring technology has the potential to support independent living among older adults. Limited research has examined the benefits of and barriers to the adoption of this technology among community-dwelling older adults.

Individual differences in the rate of aging and susceptibility to disease are not accounted for by chronological age alone. These individual differences are better explained by biological age, which may be estimated by biomarker prediction models. In the light of the aging demographics of the global population and the increase in lifestyle-related morbidities, it is interesting to invent a new biological age model to be used for health promotion.

Although smart speaker technology is poised to help improve the health and well-being of older adults by offering services such as music, medication reminders, and connection to others, more research is needed to determine how older adults from lower socioeconomic position (SEP) accept and use this technology.

Many older adults prefer to remain in their own homes for as long as possible. However, there are still questions surrounding how best to ensure that an individual can cope with autonomous living. Technological monitoring systems are an attractive solution; however, there is disagreement regarding activities of daily living (ADL) and the optimal technologies that should be used to monitor them.

Growing reliance on the patient portal as a mainstream modality in health system interactions necessitates prioritizing digital health equity through systems-level strategies that acknowledge and support all persons. Older adults with physical, cognitive, sensory, and socioeconomic vulnerabilities often rely on the involvement of family and friends in managing their health, but the role of these care partners in health information technology is largely undefined and poorly understood. This viewpoint article discusses challenges and opportunities of systematic engagement of care partners through shared access to the patient portal that have been amplified in the context of the COVID-19 outbreak and recent implementation of federal information blocking rules to promote information transparency alongside broader shifts toward care delivery innovation and population aging. We describe implementation considerations and the promise of granular, role-based privacy controls in addressing the nuanced and dynamic nature of individual information sharing preferences and fostering person- and family-centered care delivery.

Estimates suggest that 6.2 million Americans aged ≥65 years are living with Alzheimer dementia in 2021, and by 2060, this number could more than double to 13.8 million. As a result, public health officials anticipate a greater need for caregivers of persons with Alzheimer disease or related dementia and support resources for both people living with dementia and their caregivers. Despite the growing need for dementia caregiver support services, there is a lack of consensus regarding how to tailor these services to best meet the heterogeneous needs of individual caregivers. To fill this gap, Care to Plan (CtP), a web-based tool for caregivers of people living with dementia, was developed to provide tailored support recommendations to dementia caregivers.

This article describes a ground-up initiative for a volunteer-run digital literacy program in Singapore targeting vulnerable older adults, focusing on the barriers faced in running this program and training these beneficiaries. It further offers possible solutions to overcome these hurdles, providing insight for individuals or organizations seeking to start similar ground-up initiatives.

By 2050, nearly 13 million Americans will have Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD), with most of those with ADRD or mild cognitive impairment (MCI) receiving home care. Mobile telepresence robots may allow persons with MCI or ADRD to remain living independently at home and ease the burden of caregiving. The goal of this study was to identify how an existing mobile telepresence robot can be enhanced to support at-home care of people with MCI or ADRD through key stakeholder input.