چكيده فارسي :
Background: Population ageing is a major challenge in health care system in the worldwide. One of the solutions for overcoming this challenge is the use of mobile health (mHealth) applications which is critical for older people whom are facing isolation, depression, and fear of disability in their mature years. MHealth applications enhance life quality of elderly people by increasing communication and social connectivity, accessing to information and health services, promoting lifelong learning, increasing independency, providing reminders about important events. In spite of the mentioned benefits, there are barriers in mHealth applications use in older people. By reducing and removing these barriers, these people can apply mHealth applications for promoting health and quality of life.
Objectives: this paper aimed to identify the main barriers of using mHealth applications in older people.
Materials/Patients and Methods: This study is a review article that was conducted in 2016. The study was carried out in valid scientific websites for searching books, articles, scientific documents. Also, sources were selected based on content related to research issue.
Results: First, the barriers were gathered from extracted articles and reports. Then, the important barriers were identified and the findings showed that the main barriers in mHealth applications use in elderly are including normal changes in cognitive, motor and sensory functions, lack of English knowledge, undesirable attitudes towards new technology, little experience about use of mHealth applications, unaware of the many benefits of technology, lack of self-confidence, concerns about privacy and security, learning delays and reduced learning. Also, poor usability and absence of guidelines for older people, lack of required education and costs of mHealth applications can have an effect on mHealth applications use in elderly.
Conclusion: According to older population increasing in Iran and important role of mHealth applications in promoting life quality of them, our country can design applications based on elderly needs. Also, facilitating of mHealth applications use in elderly, increasing literacy in older people, changing attitudes of elderly with involvement in designing applications and enhancing security and privacy these applications can help to overcome these barriers.
