| Creators: |
Gewald, Heiko and Vogel, Doug and Bozan, Karoly |
| Title: |
Introduction to the Minitrack on Senior's Use of Health Information Technology |
| Item Type: |
Conference or Workshop Item |
| Event Title: |
(Proceedings of the) 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) |
| Event Location: |
Waikoloa, HI, USA |
| Event Dates: |
January 3-6, 2018 |
| Projects: |
IDI |
| Page Range: |
pp. 3014-3015 |
| Additional Information: |
Conference Proceedings; Vol. 5 |
| Date: |
January 2018 |
| Divisions: |
Informationsmanagement |
| Abstract (ENG): |
Countless studies underline the challenges of the
aging population for literally all economies around
the world. In order to be able to cater for this
population, the IS discipline needs to provide
insights how we enable seniors to take part in digital
life.
Health information in whatever form is not only
available digitally today, in more and more societies
it is expected that an individual is able to handle
her/his health information online. This puts
tremendous challenges on a large proportion of the
elderly generation. Certainly, several members of
this group have good cognitive and motoric skills
and are used to manage digital sources. However, a
significant number of the elderly still has difficulties
to either go online or even see the necessity to do so.
This leaves us with two main challenges:
1. To provide technical devices which allow
ageing users to interact digitally when
motoric and visual competencies decline. The
currently preferred devices to access like
smartphones and tablet PCs are not useful for
users with declining vision or motoric
challenges in their fingers.
2. To provide digital services that offer a
sustainable perceived usefulness to the
elderly. Although their number is steadily
increasing, the number of digital offerings for
this target group remains comparatively low.
Especially social networks (like the often
proclaimed “facebook for seniors” are still
not available for a larger audience.
Also, offerings to manage health information
online is too often engineered and coded by younger
professionals with limited understanding of the older
target audience. Companies developing such tools
need to better listen to their end users and come up
with new and creative ideas to make it worthwhile
for the users, i.e. increase perceived usefulness.
In a similar vein the effect of training is all too
often overlooked. Although it has been often shown
that users perform better when they received proper
training, the mechanisms for an elderly audience are
often not fully explored. Seniors have a different
digital skillset developed during their lifetime
compared to people of younger generations. They
also adopted different learning styles. These factors
need to be taken into account when designing
teaching mechanisms. Also, seniors tend to lean
towards personalized training and seem to be not as
responsive to online self-study as the younger
generation.
The papers in this mini-track address these
questions and provide interesting insights into these
matters.
Karoly Bozan and David Mooney present their
work “Effects of Training and Support on Patient
Portal Ease of Use Among the Elderly”. They
address an important and still under-researched area,
namely how training affects the perceived ease-ofuse, seniors attest information systems. Their
findings underline not only the importance of
training, but specifically the need for specific forms
of training designed to suit the ageing generation.
Their study found that the training and on-demand
support increased computer confidence, self-efficacy, perceived ease of use, and reduced
computer anxiety among the elderly. Whilst younger
people tend to be self-contained using tutorials on
platforms like YouTube, the older generation very
much tends to lean towards physical relationships,
i.e. a coach or trainer approach.
Michael Milovich and Debra Burleson present
their work “Social Media and Older Adults:
Understanding Cognitive Training and Social
Network”. The authors reviewed the value of speed
of processing training, challenges that the older
adults face as they use technologies, and how social
inclusion might provide significant insights. Rather
than advocating for the traditional methods of
teaching and exploring technology, they propose that
the IS discipline first needs to understand how older
adults might interact with technology and improve
the quality of their life.
We are looking forward to future researchers
building on the knowledge presented in these papers
and presenting their own research dealing with these
issues.
The growing number of older adults as part of
society will require the IS discipline for some time
to come up with new and better solutions to ensure
digital inclusion of the elderly. |
| Forthcoming: |
No |
| Language: |
English |
| Citation: |
Gewald, Heiko and Vogel, Doug and Bozan, Karoly
(2018)
Introduction to the Minitrack on Senior's Use of Health Information Technology.
In: (Proceedings of the) 51st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), January 3-6, 2018, Waikoloa, HI, USA, pp. 3014-3015.
ISBN 9781510856554
|
