JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The population is ageing and research on maintaining and extending older adult independent living is growing in interest. An approach towards building and sustaining quality of life is to develop interactive technologies to support elder independent living through fitness. However, reviews of current fitness technologies for elders indicate that the success of these technologies is considerably limited.

Objective:

This scoping review aims to investigate the reason for the limited outcomes from these technologies by comparing current fitness technology interventions to known needs and preferences of elders from elder specific technology acceptance research, barriers and enablers to elder physical activity, and qualitative research on elder fitness technologies. The scoping review questions investigated are: 1. How well do current elder fitness technologies align with known elder preferences? 2. How well do current research methodologies evaluate the known needs and preferences of elder adults?

Methods:

Our review was conducted in compliance with the PRISMA guidelines for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Research articles from the last ten years were searched in the ACM Digital Library, IEEE Xplore, Medline, and PsycINFO databases using the key words related to older adults, technology, and exercise. Research article were filtered only include articles that specifically evaluated technologies for fitness, focused specifically on elders, and mentioned a specific technology used in the intervention. Reviewed research articles were evaluated versus known needs and preferences of elders related to fitness technology. The assessment criteria was synthesis through literature on elder technology acceptance, barriers and enablers to elder physical activity, and qualitative research on elder fitness technologies. Interventions were scored by five reviewers using a dual-review approach.

Results:

43 research articles were selected in the scoping review. 16 of the revied articles were from medical journals, 15 from engineering journals, seven from HCI or computing journals, three from public health, and two from a combined computing and engineering journal. Only 16 of the 43 research articles cited elder specific design works. The Elder Fitness Technology Translation Assessment tool was synthesis from known preferences of elders with the follow six factors: 1. Compatibility with Lifestyle, 2. Similarity with Past Experience, 3. Dignity and Independence, 4. Privacy Concerns, 5. Social Support, and 6. Emotion. The average scores for the 43 research articles across the six factors were 2±0.85 on Compatibility with Lifestyle, 3.11±0.80 on Similarity to Past Experience, 3.44$±0.76 on Dignity and Independence, 3.15±0.92 on Privacy Concerns, 3.68$±0.91 on Short-Term Outcomes, 2.72±1.15 on Long-Term Outcomes, 2.78±0.88 on Social Support, and 3.13±1.15 on Emotion. No research article scored a three or above on all of the six elder specific factors.

Conclusions:

Overall, the results show a lack of consideration for the known preferences of elders related to technology and physical activity in the field. Three main opportunities for growth are identified: 1. Better alignment between the studied needs of elders and current fitness technology interventions, 2. Better translation of findings from elder design work to designs in practice, and 3. More explicit usage of elder specific considerations in research methodologies. More explicit inclusion of elder specific factors in the design and assessment of elder fitness technologies is worth testing to evaluate how these established factors can support the development of more impactful interventions. We hypothesize that the proposed Elder Fitness Technology Translation Assessment tool can help bridge the gap between technological capability and real-world applicability, ultimately fostering greater adoption, respect for elders, and long term success.