A Survey of Tablet Applications for Promoting Successful Aging in Older Adults

Aging well consists of the following components: management of chronic conditions, maintenance of physical health and cognitive health, and active social engagement. However, the increasing life expectancy, rising healthcare costs, increasing number of older adults, and decreasing number of care providers pose challenges to the maintenance of different components for aging well. To that end, technological innovation can help to augment human need and capability along the different components, and help overcome the potential barriers in aging well. In this paper, we summarize the published studies for different tablet-based applications designed specifically for older adults targeting different components of aging well. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the applications for each component, and identify the opportunities to develop a cohesive application for addressing the different components of aging well.