Older adults can use technology: why healthcare professionals must overcome ageism in digital health.

ABSTRACT

Older adults rapidly adopted technology for healthcare, known as digital health, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adults are increasingly using telehealth, smartphone apps, and other digital health technologies to reduce barriers to care, maintain patient-provider communication, and promote disease self-management. Yet, many healthcare professionals have maintained outdated beliefs rooted in societal ageism that digital health and older adults are incompatible. As a result, older adults have been disproportionally excluded from health services and clinical trials that use digital health relative to their younger counterparts. In this commentary, we urge all healthcare disciplines to challenge ageist beliefs and practices that have contributed to the "digital health divide" among older patients. We provide examples of evidence-based strategies and current scientific initiatives that can promote digital health inclusion in research, clinical practice, and training. By achieving digital health inclusion, we can increase access, provide preventative and comprehensive care, and decrease healthcare costs for older patients.

The use of technology among older adults (age ≥ 65) increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many older adults are using computers, smartphones, wearable devices, and other technologies for healthcare purposes, known as "digital health". Digital health is valuable for older patients because it eliminates barriers to treatments, such as cost, travel, and access to doctors. Yet, many professionals in healthcare believe that their older patients are unwilling or unable to use digital health. We believe that these harmful beliefs are explained by ageism that is deeply rooted in our society (e.g., "you can't teach an old dog new tricks"). Clinicians do not receive training to teach older patients new technology. In research, technology is developed for younger patients because older adults are excluded from studies. As a result, older adults are getting left behind in our increasingly technical healthcare system. The goal of this article is to raise our colleagues' awareness to this problem and to support older adults' use of digital health. We provide solutions for researchers, clinicians, and educators. A growing number of older adults recognize the potential of digital health and time for healthcare professionals to join them.