ICT-based health information services for elderly people: past
experiences, current trends, and future strategies
Med Inform Internet Med, 32 (4):
251--261 (December 2007)DOI: 10.1080/14639230701692736
Abstract
Although health information is readily available on the Internet and
has changed the way people deal with their health in many ways, the
retrieval of relevant information remains problematic, especially
for elderly people. With a focus on elderly people, this paper summarizes
current trends in consumer health informatics, discusses past and
present initiatives providing health-information services, and proposes
a future strategy for the design of sustainable services. A systematic
literature review and a review of past German and EU projects concerned
with health information services for elderly people are given. Many
publications focus on health information services for specific diseases
and on their quality and semantic accessibility, yet few deal with
presenting and customizing health information for elderly and disabled
people. Past experiences from Germany suggest that very often the
specific needs of this target group are not met, and therefore accessibility
remains largely hypothetical. We propose a strategy with five key
points for the design of sustainable health-information services
for elderly people. More research is needed to customize web-based
health information services to the needs of the user group that needs
them most urgently - elderly and disabled people.