An exploratory study of ageing women's perception on access to health informatics via a mobile phone-based intervention

Abstract

Objective: This is an exploratory study examining the perceived attitudes and readiness of women aged 50 years or older on adopting a mobile phone-based intervention named as Infohealth in Singapore.

Method: Infohealth is designed as a health informatics to tailor personalized healthcare advice for the well-being for women - very little is known about the acceptability level of self-care technology, especially the older among the female population. To explore participants' perceptions and acceptance, a telephone survey was developed from concepts identified from various user acceptance theories and models. Correlation was used to identify significant dependent variables while partial least square and boot-strapping procedures were used to estimate the significance of the path coefficients.

Results: Analysis supports the validity and reliability of the 27-item research model consisting of 8 constructs. 700 women aged 50years and older responded to the survey. Findings show the extent of ageing women's existing dependency on others for help, regard for close ones whom they care for, opinion from family and friends, and guarding the health of people who are important for them do not directly affect the intention of using Infohealth, but are rather mediated by perceived usefulness. This study validated some ageing-specific and female-posited variables to suggest as main constructs in future innovation adoption studies about older women. Technological anxiety and perceived physical condition both have no direct relationship with perceived ease of use and usefulness, lifestyle and intention to use.

Conclusion: Findings reinforced the significant roles of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, compatibility, and subjective norm in predicting the adoption intention of Infohealth among ageing women. More extensive statistical analysis is needed to discover more interesting findings while qualitative analysis can help to detect humanistic design opportunities.