Research seminar about what makes seniors adopt digital technologies

In this research seminar, that took place on 5 February 2016, Dr Rana Mostaghel presented preliminary findings from an ongoing research project that seeks to uncover what are the key factors that make Swedish seniors to accept and use modern digital technologies both from users and service/product providers. This is a crucial quest as current and projected costs for elder care are growing rapidly and are expected to continue do so; also it is increasingly difficult to recruit motivated and well-trained personal for elder care operations. Therefore, the development and use of digital technologies to support elder care is promising and may show to be crucial as these technologies may both offer services that complement and substitute conventional elder service set-ups. However, if technologies are designed in a way that our seniors refuse to accept and use them, no value may be obtained.

In the first phase of the ongoing project, Dr Rana Mostaghel together with her colleague Dr Pejvak Oghazi have explored seniors' perceptions of selected technologies are currently analysis data to discriminate the key success factors for the use of digital technologies. In the second phase, the entrepreneurs and producers of digital technologies for elder care will be investigated with seminar aim. The overall project aim is to understand the process of commercialization of technology for the elderly by drawing on the fields of entrepreneurship, geriatrics, and social psychology. This two year project is sponsored by the Kamprad Family Foundation.