Dementia-Related Barriers to mHealth Use: Validation by Expert Opinion.

Abstract

mHealth use for people with dementia is fraught with factors influencing its implementation in care and daily life. A better understanding of these factors may provide guidelines to inclusive design. This study aimed to assess whether factors gathered in a literature-based model could be validated by opinions of experts. On basis of a questionnaire as part of a larger study, experts identified barriers that they considered to be related to aging and dementia influencing mHealth use. Nineteen barriers that were mentioned by the dementia experts were covered in our literature-based model. No adaptions to the model were required. The dementia experts acclaimed three barriers to mHealth use that could not be mapped onto the framework: the unavailability of (informal) caregivers to support the mHealth use, the stage and type of dementia of an mHealth user, and the fear of the unknown. These should be considered as prerequisites in the implementation phase of mHealth and explored more in future research.