Elderly Users’ Experiences Navigating Telemedicine in Digital Healthcare
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Abstract
Digital health technologies have transformed healthcare delivery, with telemedicine emerging as a critical tool for serving aging populations. While much research has addressed the technical and clinical aspects of telemedicine, little is known about how elderly users emotionally and socially experience these platforms. Despite increasing adoption, the subjective meanings older adults assign to their telemedicine encounters remain underexplored, prompting the question: how do elderly individuals perceive and make sense of their interactions with telemedicine systems?
This study adopts a descriptive phenomenological approach to uncover the lived experiences of elderly users and reveal the essence of their engagement with digital healthcare. Using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with ten elderly participants aged 65 to 82 years (six females and four males) residing in urban and peri-urban areas of Central Java, Indonesia, the study identified four core themes: technological unfamiliarity, emotional ambivalence, reliance on social support, and evolving trust in digital platforms. Thematic analysis allowed for the extraction of meaning units that illustrated how participants navigated both practical and emotional dimensions of telemedicine use. These results provide a rich account of the tensions, adaptations, and dependencies involved in digital care among older adults.
The findings highlight the need for human-centered telemedicine design that reflects the psychological and relational realities of elderly users, and suggest new directions for inclusive digital health strategies in aging societies.
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References
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