Abstract
Objectives: To investigate mobile health (m-health) interventions in self-care and treatment adherence in older adults.
Design: A review study.
Participants: People over 50 years of age with chronic diseases.
Interventions: M-health-based interventions were used to promote self-care and treatment adherence.
Outcome measures: Self-care and adherence.
Results: The duration of interventions in different studies was between 8 weeks to 12 months. All participants were over 50 years old and included both male and female groups. The findings showed that m-health has a good potential for educating and empowering the target population. M-health interventions can be categorized into 5 groups such as messages, calls, applications, devices, and Internet-based interventions. They can also be used to provide care and promote health in various diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and lung disease. In this study, self-care included practices such as self-care behaviors, self-efficacy, and self-monitoring/management. Similarly, adherence included practices such as treatment/ medication adherence, and healthy behaviors adherence.
Conclusions: The results indicated the positive effects of m-health on improving self-care and treatment adherence. Considering the increasing population of elderly people in the world, and the increase of various problems and challenges affecting their health, using novel technologies to provide health and care services while reducing the adverse effect caused by the lack of resources can bring positive social and economic effects. It seems that the planned use of this technology can help increase the healthcare system’s efficiency and reduce health costs.