Enhancing Inclusive mHealth Design for People Living with Dementia: Examples from Literature

Abstract

The availability of mHealth technologies for older adults living with dementia is increasing. However, due to highly complex and varying clinical presentations of dementia, these technologies do not always meet their needs, wishes and capabilities. An exploratory literature review was performed to identify studies that applied evidence-based design principles or provide design choices that aim to improve mHealth design. These were categorized as a unique design choice to tackle barriers to mHealth use related to cognition, perception, physical ability, frame of mind, or speech- and language. Through thematic analysis, themes of design choices were summarized per category in the MOLDEM-US framework. Thirty-six studies were included for data extraction, leading to seventeen categories of design choices. This study pushes the need to further investigate and refine inclusive mHealth design solutions for populations with highly complex symptoms, such as those living with dementia.

Keywords: Dementia; Human-centered design; Usability; mHealth.