Exploring The Use of Smartwatches for Monitoring Elderly Health for Developing Country

Abstract

The healthcare of elderly is critically important for families, hospitals and government officials, as these all pay special attention to providing healthcare to older adults. As the technology is evolving, the use of IoT has revolutionized the healthcare industry turning it to be known as smart healthcare. Smartwatches are becoming important and common to use as an important tool for smart healthcare. Smartwatch-based smart healthcare can be efficiently used for elderly persons. There exist studies on smartwatch use by elderly persons investigating the factors influencing old age adults; however, there is limited research on studying the behavior of elderly persons for adopting smartwatches for the healthcare purpose especially for the developing countries like Pakistan. At the same social and technical perspective can provide a comprehensive way of how the elderly get healthcare using technical aspects of smartwatches. Using interviews and a qualitative research approach is being employed to extract insights from a diverse group of individuals. Semi-structured interviews were performed for this purpose. The data was subjected to thematic analysis using socio-technical theory, which revealed four main themes that are health monitoring at an older age, usability features of a smartwatch for healthcare, smartwatch adoption and acceptance and social support of using smartwatches by the elderly. These themes provide insights into the variables affecting the adoption, acceptance and social aspects of using smartwatch for healthcare in old age. It was revealed that smartwatches helped to encourage better healthcare for the elderly because they could be used as health monitoring devices to actively control and track health-related parameters. The results highlight the mutually beneficial acceptance of smartwatch to improve elderly healthcare. These observations offer vital advice for healthcare professionals, academics, and stakeholders looking to improve the healthcare of the elderly as smartwatches continue to reshape healthcare management.