How age and health status impact attitudes towards aging and technologies in care: a quantitative analysis

Increasing proportions of geriatric patients pose tremendous challenges for our society. Developments in assistive technologies have the potential to support older and frail people in aging and care. To reach a sustainable adoption of these technologies, the perceptions and wishes of future users must be understood. In particular, the relationships between individual health-related factors, and the perceptions of aging and using assistive technologies in severe health situations must be empirically examined.

Addressing this research gap, our quantitative study (N = 570) investigates the impact of diverse future users' age and health status on their a) perceptions of aging, b) perceptions and acceptance of using assistive technologies in aging and care, as well as c) end-of-life decisions regarding technology usage. For this, four groups were segmented for the comparison of younger (< 50 years) healthy, younger chronically ill, older (50 + years) healthy, and older chronically ill participants.

The results revealed that health status is more decisive for age-related perceptions compared to age. The technology-related perceptions were slightly impacted by either chronological age or health status. The end-of-life decisions showed the most striking differences in the willingness to use assistive technologies, revealing older chronically ill participants to have more restrained attitudes towards technology usage than older healthy as well as all younger participants.

The findings suggest that the benefits of assistive technologies in private or professional care contexts should be communicated and implemented tailored to the respective user group's needs. Moreover, the results allow us to derive practical implications within the geriatric care context.