University Students’ Attitudes toward Adoption of Mobile Health Application for Serving Older People

Abstract

In this quantitative study, we examined the awareness of mobile health (mHealth) applications among Taiwan’s university students, particularly the government-operated My Health Bank application. The My Health Bank application allows users to access their personal health information simply through their smartphone’s sensor-assisted facial recognition camera and fingerprint sensor. Whether these university students might help older adults to use this application if they perceive it to be helpful was also explored. Two instruments were used in this study, namely, the Perceptions toward My Health Bank (PMHB) and Geriatric Attitudes Scale (GAS). Two hundred twenty-five (225) university students from the Departments of Senior Citizen Service Management (n = 136) and Nursing (n = 89) at two universities participated in this study. The findings indicated low adoption of My Health Bank and related mHealth applications among students even though they had high adoption rates of smartphones. However, they perceived that the functions of this application are useful and should be promoted to older adults. Thus, building a basic foundation of mHealth and related technology courses is recommended to assist healthcare students in being well-prepared for working with older adults in the digital society.