Mobile health applications for communication between caregivers of community-dwelling older adults: A scoping review

Abstract

It is unclear how mobile health (mHealth) technology can be used for monitoring and communication between caregivers with spatial constraints. This systematic scoping review identifies the characteristics, functions, facilitators, and barriers of mHealth used for communication between various types of caregivers for older adults. Guided by Joanna Briggs Institute Scoping Review Methodology, all published peer-reviewed and grey literature indexed in PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar from January 2012 to April 2022 were reviewed. Sixteen of 854 studies met the inclusion criteria. Findings suggested mHealth was primarily used for monitoring older adults’ health, educating about home care, alerting about emergencies, communicating with family members or health providers, and GPS-based location tracking. Responsibility for older adults and willingness to use facilitated usage, while old age-related challenges, illiteracy, lack of technical skills, and cell phone size and Internet connectivity-related limitations impeded it. These findings can help researchers and care providers design better mHealth solutions to provide families with real-time information on older adults.