CONSTRAINTS ON TELEHEALTH ADOPTION AND USE BY OLDER ADULTS

Telehealth technologies have the potential to deliver effective health care more affordably and conveniently than in-person delivery, particularly for managing chronic conditions affecting 75% of seniors age 65+ yr. We report on factors affecting acceptance (watch comfort study), system and human reliability (remote monitoring), and usability (health portal). For the watch comfort study, results suggest that designing for comfort and aesthetics can facilitate acceptability for all age groups. In the remote monitoring study, older adults with and without heart failure reliably used telehealth components daily at least 70% of the time over a 6-month interval and system availability exceeded 90%. For the health portal study, 86% of older adults indicated willingness to use a health portal and Individual differences in numeracy and Internet experience predicted their performance on simulated health portal tasks. Results underline the importance of design and training for telehealth adoption and use.