Digital wellness services for young elderly- A missed opportunity for mobile services

Abstract

The ageing population of Europe is a concern for political decision makers and visions on how to deal with the issues are being debated. The issues raised concern elderly people, the age group 75-90 years, but not much thought is given the young elderly- the age groups 60-75 years-as the serious age-related problems are not visible among them. Nevertheless, pro-active preventive action programs among the young elderly could significantly reduce the problems society faces when people become elderly. We will address the issues with the ageing population from the perspective of digital wellness services that are designed, produced and offered over omnivore platforms on smart mobile phones and backed up by analytics tools over cloud services. The aim is to keep the young elderly healthy, active and independent when they reach the 75+ age group. In this research the digital wellness services are proposed as effective interventions to build wellness routines. The design of wellness services need to be done through co-creation with the young elderly, not for them.