Abstract
Skills, knowledge, and awareness of digital and technological tools are essential to improve the state of well-being and health of older adults and also to mitigate the condition of social isolation in the aging process. For this reason, it is necessary to implement a social learning of electronic/digital tools for health of older people to support the achievement of eHealth and digital competences. The paper reports the results of an Italian innovative eHealth training for the European project ACCESS. The training has been based on blended didactical and interactive educational techniques, aimed at collecting as many points of view as possible from older adults. A total of 58 older adults were recruited to attend a four-week training program, which included five modules. The results showed a statistical significant difference between the eHealth Literacy Scale (eHEALS) mean value before and after the course. A significant negative correlation was found between eHEALS and positive/total Survey of Technology Use (SOTU), suggesting an inverse relationship between positive/total SOTU and eHEALS. There is a strong positive and statistically significant relationship between satisfaction with the training and eHEALS. The results indicate that the intervention increased the digital competences of participants connected to health.
Highlights
Published: 10 November 2021Skills, knowledge, and awareness of digital and technological tools are essential to improve the state of well-being and health of older adults [1,2] and to mitigate the condition of social isolation in the aging process, which has become even more serious since the beginning of the COVID-19 era [3,4].social distancing measures forces individuals to minimize physical interactions that result in increasingly widespread and grave social isolation and loneliness
The most important outcome of the ACCESS training is the decisive improvement of the eHealth literacy itself: the intervention has demonstrated to significantly improve the digital health competences of the older participants, especially the ability to retrieve useful and reliable health information on the Internet to increase the ability of older adults to use Internet links and find desired health-related information, as already demonstrated by a study in the field [23]
The authors recommended to deeply analyze the relationship between eHealth literacy and specific health outcomes, especially to be conducted in clinical settings, where participants may experience less difficulty in reporting health or health literacy problems. Despite those limitations, which are valid for our case, the ACCESS training seems to differ from the others: while all the reported studies are highly focused on specific health topics, our training was designed to create an overall perspective towards eHealth in the participants; in other terms, it is not linked to a specific device use or health problems, but it introduces concepts such as usability, awareness, and knowledge on eHealth and health literacy, with the aim of creating a positive representation of technologies, not dependent on the specific problem/device
Summary
Knowledge, and awareness of digital and technological tools are essential to improve the state of well-being and health of older adults [1,2] and to mitigate the condition of social isolation in the aging process, which has become even more serious since the beginning of the COVID-19 era [3,4]. Health technologies can support older adults to mitigate the overwhelming impact of the pandemic situation and enhance well-being, while COVID-19 is an “alarm bell”, reminding that an immediate attention should be paid to improve eHealth literacy among older people to use technological/digital innovations as a “complementary tool” to provide care services [5]. During these contingencies, older adults are pushed to improve their technology skills and gained experience using online platforms, with a stronger motivation and a more favorable attitude toward digital or technological tools and learning opportunities, as a real necessity of daily life, or a ‘sink or swim’ moment for many reluctant or unskilled users [6]. The ACCESS eHealth training has the ambitious purpose of advancing toward a clearer definition and measurement of eHealth literacy in practical scenarios, improving the overall eHealth literacy and supporting the positive use of technology [19]
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