Uses of digital technology for older adults

Posted 2024-09-02 13:31:39

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Senior citizen care services: Digital technology is increasingly used to address elder care services. The emergence and expansion of digital technologies have greatly improved the quality of Assisted living for older people and enabled various functionalities, such as direct and efficient elderly health checks.

Older adults and senior citizens are not a standalone group, these people, often a vulnerable and somewhat neglected minority, are also impacted by the emergence of extensive infrastructures in digital technology and service providers. Where now E-commerce enables quick-commerce models of shopping services based on smartphone applications can interact and use a unified payments interface, to deliver groceries and food to residences in a few minutes. Currently, services deliver almost every type of product to residences, and many services are especially aimed at meeting requirements for older adults.

The impact of these digital technologies enables functionalities and uses for older adults.

Elderly health checks, monitoring:
Various technologies currently enable the monitoring of elderly health. Other use cases occur wherein a care practitioner is in direct digital communication with the elder adult, mirroring telemedicine but may also utilise viewing and cameras. Features and interaction for elderly health checks and monitoring are also incorporated with cloud-based voice assistance and smart assistants. Elderly health checks and monitoring can use technology as a medium, facilitating imaging, audio, and video to relevant caregivers and staff for diagnostics. On the other hand, various devices such as wearable health monitors are generating data and figures for recordkeeping and caregivers, active transmission and streams/logging for older adults: some examples of these are monitoring blood pressure, blood glucose levels, etc. Various technologies act as a medium, from smart voice assistants, cellular devices and computers, enabling older adults to communicate and utilise the internet. While other devices are specifically designed to monitor and record vital health aspects and metrics. Smartphones and internet enabled phones utilise extensive chat applications, many already used by older adults and their guardians.

Everyday conveniences:
Digital services incorporated into smartphones and accessible from the World Wide Web provide everyday conveniences such as groceries and shopping within a few minutes. These services are known as a quick-commerce service. Independent and assisted living facilities are particularly suited to meet older adults' individual demands and requirements. The quick commerce services are one category, various other services provide delivery of medicine, food, groceries, and items within varying time periods. In general, meeting and satisfying the everyday conveniences provides a great amount of relief and support for older adults, via quick commerce and E commerce services, and are heavily subscribed to by various older adults and their caregivers/guardians.

Conclusion: The blog aimed to outline some of the uses of digital technology for older adults and outlined how devices and technologies can enable monitoring using technology as a medium for transmission of data, images, and visuals. E-commerce applications include quick-commerce services, are now utilised by various older adults to meet their shopping and everyday needs, in independent and assisted living facilities. Artha is a leading assisted living facility for older adults in Gurgaon.