Interventions to Form Wellness Routines Among Young Elderly

The ageing population of Europe is a concern for political decision makers as the ageing population by 2020 will represent very large groups of people (18-23% of the population in most EU countries). The issues raised concern elderly people, the age group 75-90 years, as their need for health and social care is expected to grow beyond what national economies can afford. Not much thought is given the “young elderly”- the age group 60-75 years – as the serious age-related problems are yet not visible among them and, hence, they are not on the political radar. Nevertheless, interventions to form and sustain wellness routines among the “young elderly” as part of preventive action programs could significantly reduce the problems society faces when people become elderly. We propose that digital wellness services on smartphones can serve as interventions to form and sustain wellness routines

Digital Coaching to Build Sustainable Wellness Routines for Young Elderly

ur focus is on digital wellness services for the “young elderly” (the 60-75 years old) age group. Wellness services will help young elderly people to improve and maintain their independence and their functional capacity. Digital coaching will help the users to build good and effective wellness routines and to sustain and develop them for better health. Potential early adopter groups are identified and the functionality of digital coaching for wellness services is worked out

Digital Support to Guide Physical Activity - Augmented Daily Routines for Young Elderly

New EU-level studies show that EU is “turning increasingly grey” and the old-age de-pendency ratio increases steadily during the next three decades. There is a growing, serious problem – people live longer lives but they are in worse shape during their final years and need growing support from health care resources. There is need for a new focus on prevention and on turning the development. The “young elderly” (the 60-75 years old age group) should adopt physical activity (PA) programs and make them part of their everyday routines. The learning processes get started through interventions with digital wellness services. DigitalWells is a research and development program to acti-vate 1000 young elderly to select and use PA programs. The goal is to keep the young elderly in better shape for their senior years (75+) and to contribute to significant reduc-tions in the growth of elderly health and social care costs

Digital Wellness Services: Key to Better Quality of Life for Young Elderly

Digital wellness services for the “young elderly” (the 60-75 years old age group) will be interventions in their daily routines and if/when they are accepted and adopted they will help keep the young elderly in better shape for their senior years (75+). This will contribute to significant reductions in the estimated costs for health and social care for the ageing population. On an individual level, digital wellness services contribute to a better quality of life if designed to fit the needs of the young elderly. Platform tech- nology for digital services offers possible tools for intervention if the tools and services fit the requirements of the young elderly. We summarize several of our studies as a syn- thesis and work out a conceptual framework to facilitate the design and implementation of digital wellness services

Co-creation Model to Design Wearables for Emotional Wellness of Elderly

Ways to influence emotions have always been an area of interest within the scientific community. The objective of this research is to find the role of technology in order to improve emotional wellness for the elderly population. We conducted a qualitative and quantitative study with the help of interviews and a survey. A sample of 24 respondents is selected randomly from the elderly population. The results showed a strong correlation between emotional, psychological and social wellness dimensions and elders comfort with the use of technology. Based on our study, we present a co-creation model to design wearables for monitoring and improving emotional wellness for elderly. There is a need for focused efforts to develop digital interventions for emotional wellness for elderly. It is important to include elders as co-designers to form effective solutions for elderly through a co-creation process

Healthy Seniors: A Program Evaluation

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this research study was to perform a summative evaluation of the Healthy Seniors program at Dominican University of California, a wellness program for older adults facilitated by occupational therapy students and faculty. METHOD: A non-experimental mixed-methods descriptive research design composed of quantitative and qualitative methods was used to analyze data from the 2011 Healthy Seniors sessions. RESULTS: The majority of participants in the Dominican University of California Healthy Seniors program were women between the ages of 75 and 85. Overall, participants in the Healthy Seniors program improved in functional status and were satisfied with their experience. CONCLUSION: Results support the usefulness of community-based wellness programs in sustaining healthy aging, and suggest that the Healthy Seniors program is a much needed and valued service for older adults within the community

Using a Physical Activity Application to Promote Physical Activity Levels Among Aged People: A Follow-Up Study

The share and life expectancy of the ageing population are increasing. However, aged people are threatened by insufficient physical activity. Therefore, finding ways to support people to live a physically active life in older age is imperative. Digital wellness technologies represent a potential solution, but in order for such technologies to be effective, research is needed to gain a better understanding on their use among aged people. To address this need, this study investigated whether the use of a physical activity application can promote physical activity among aged people. The physical activity levels were measured at three different time points: before taking the application into use, after four months of use, and after 12 months of use. The results show a modest increase in the physical activity levels. When examining physical activity categories (based on the IPAQ-E), a participant rather shifted to a higher than to a lower physical activity category. Overall, the changes were more substantial after 12 months than after four months of use. The results suggest that physical activity applications used in everyday life have potential in promoting physical activity levels among aged people

Fuzzy optimization to improve mobile wellness applications for young-elderly

Mobile applications and specifically wellness applications are used increasingly by different age-segments of the general population. This is facilitated by the large amount of data collected through various built-in sensors in the smartphone or other mobile devises, e.g. smart watches. Young-elderly cohort (60-75 year old individual) is probably one of the most potential user groups that would benefit from using mobile health and wellness applications, if their needs and preferences are precisely addressed. General knowledge is limited on understanding to what extent mobile wellness applications can and should provide precise recommendations which improve the users’ health and physical conditions. To address this problem, the current study identifies the potential benefits of utilizing fuzzy optimization tools to design recommendation systems that can take into consideration the (i) imprecision in the data and (ii) the imprecision by which one can estimate the effect of a recommendation on the user of the system. The proposed approach, depending on the context of use, identifies a set of actions to be taken by the users in order to optimize the physical or mental condition from various perspectives. The model is illustrated through the example of walking speed optimization which is an important issue for the young-elderly