Abstract
To investigate the impact of training the elderly to use the Internet and mobile computer devices in order to become more active in their health care. This study utilized semi-structured interviews and surveys. Five themes emerged from the interviews that described participants' motivations and barriers they experienced when using the mobile devices and Internet. Survey data revealed that levels of computer anxiety decreased and levels of efficacy increasing after training. Conclusion: Training the elderly to use the Internet lowered levels of computer anxiety. In addition, participants used the information retrieved from the Internet to become more active in their own health care.
Highlights
The Internet provides an opportunity to the public and healthcare professionals to access medical and health information, improve the efficiency and effective, timely healthcare
The majority of patients prefer to let their physician make the decisions, the more a patient learns about their illness, the more likely they are to ask questions of their physician. [28,29,30,31,32] Studies have shown that patients who ask questions, elicit treatment options, express opinions, and state their preferences regarding treatment during office visits with their physicians have measurably better health outcomes than those who do not communicate. [8, 33,34,35,36,37]this study explored the impact the Internet had on the elderly with regard to their participation in their own health care
To facilitate the training of the elderly, a large Hong Kong NGO specializing in elderly service agreed to sponsor a series of mobile Internet device training seminars and make their resources available to the research team
Summary
The Internet provides an opportunity to the public and healthcare professionals to access medical and health information, improve the efficiency and effective, timely healthcare. We have observed that (1) there has been substantial resource commitment, resulting in the creation of many useful centralized services (some commercial, some governmental); (2) despite their utility, perceived and actual inadequacies of these services have stimulated disparate groups to organize their own compensatory, decentralized and local networks of health information resources. These include Internet listservs, “blogs” (that is, online interactive diaries or “Weblogs”) and local telephone circles. As new communication technologies are developed, they are explored for novel e-health uses. Old people are not a homogeneous group and we must find solutions that take into account the diversities and respect the wishes from individuals
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
