AsianScientist (Dec. 10, 2024) –On a sweltering May morning, a small church hall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s urban heartland, hummed with air conditioning and laughter. Inside the Life Chapel, with the Bee Gees’ “More Than a Woman” crooning over wireless speakers, eight women danced in a lively line of four couples. The youngest member of this weekly get together was in her 60s; the oldest, over 80.
When the song ended, a break was called. The dancers pulled out their smartphones from pockets and purses. The dance instructor, herself over 70, checked YouTube for another well-loved ’80s disco number; her students avidly chatted among themselves as they replied to WhatsApp messages about lunch plans with grandchildren, or pointed each other to Facebook updates from friends abroad.
Later, after the dancers went their separate ways for the week, messages flowed into the WhatsApp group chat for the church’s Senior Members’ Fellowship (SMF): video clips of the day’s dancing, links to suggested songs for next time, concerned check-ins on members who couldn’t make it and invitations for the future. Scattered across the city, the group nonetheless remains connected, 24/7. “Why do we meet like this? Simply put, for healthy aging!” said Jackie Lim, an SMF organizer told Asian Scientist Magazine. “We started with group chair-based exercises on Zoom during the pandemic, but that became a bit boring. Line dancing isn’t just more vigorous, but more fun. They also say dancing and music are good for the hippocampus and memory, especially for us old folks.” “It’s also always nice to see each other, whether over the phone or in person; we just have such a good time together,” another member added.
Across Asia, connectivity technologies are a growing part of the landscape of health and wellbeing for older people: broadening their social lives, linking them with public and private services and keeping them active into the later years of their lives.
Some older people have embraced digital tools with enthusiasm. These “digital seniors” aren’t just calling and texting each other over ubiquitous instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat and LINE; they’re keeping up with community and world news on social media, organizing online classes and meet-ups, e-hailing rides to travel from home and even shopping and banking online.
All of these activities help them maintain a sense of social connection, which not only boosts physical and mental wellbeing, but has also been recognized by the World Health Organization as a global public health priority. A recent 21-country McKinsey Health Institute survey of adults aged 55 years and above observed that “having purpose in life and meaningful connections with others were among the most important factors bolstering the health of older adults [worldwide].”
“We know from research that social isolation is a risk factor for poor health; it’s equivalent to smoking 10 cigarettes a day,” Maw Pin Tan, a professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Malaya, Malaysia, told Asian Scientist Magazine. “Loneliness isn’t limited to the old, but as people age and collect negative life experiences, they tend to further retreat into their shells.”
DIGITAL SENIORS
Researchers like Tan have been working to design tech solutions that not only aid older people in staying connected, but also give them more agency therein. Pei-Lee Teh and her colleagues at the Gerontechnology Laboratory at Monash University Malaysia are studying design features that make digital connectivity tools more accessible for older people. Their TakeMe app, designed in-house and currently in the testing phase, provides a senior-friendly interface to access a range of local e-hailing services like Grab and JomMakcik, as well as networks of community volunteer services from partners like Teman Malaysia.
“Many older adults are still cognitively sound and can live fairly independently, but have trouble getting out of their homes due to being wheelchair users or slow walkers,” said Teh, who also heads the management department at Monash University Malaysia’s School of Business. “TakeMe is designed so that users are able to not only hail a ride, but also call on someone more ablebodied nearby to help push their wheelchair, or lend a hand as they run errands, as and when needed.”
Companies and social enterprises are also getting onboard to help older people take care of their own wellbeing. In China, household app giants like WeChat, Taobao and Douyin are being redesigned with “seniorfriendly” interfaces that recognize voice commands in regional dialects. In Malaysia, social enterprises like Amazing Seniors allow users to stay abreast of local community activities through its namesake app. Others like Hire Seniors, an online platform for older people seeking job opportunities, work with government agencies and private companies to connect them to employers seeking their years of experience and expertise.
Research and support for digital connectivity tools for the welfare of older people have even drawn government level attention in recent years, with the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating local and national initiatives. Singapore has announced that its 2023 Action Plan for Successful Ageing would include “connectedness” as a key theme.
Likewise, in 2019, the Malaysian federal government issued an MYR6 million (US$1.27 million) grant for AGELESS, a collaborative research program across five public and private universities in Malaysia to tackle the challenges of cognitive frailty in older persons. The first longitudinal study of aging in the country, its key research arms include investigations into the role of connectivity and mobility in keeping cognitive decline at bay; a direction being explored by Teh’s team at Monash with the TakeMe app.
“Looking at AGELESS trial screening data over the pandemic, I think tech has been a game changer in supporting connectivity and mobility among older adults, especially in Malaysia,” said Tan, who is also a principal investigator in the AGELESS program. “At times, they use their phones more than their children and grandchildren.”
Tan noted that there may be some downsides to this— some users might become less physically active, preferring to spend more time in the digital world rather than deal with the inconveniences of going outside, especially in traffic-heavy cities. “But we currently don’t have enough substantitive data to confirm if the negatives outweigh the positives,” she added.
A collective of universities in Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Thailand are aiming to provide more of that data through the Digitally Inclusive, Healthy Ageing Communities (DIHAC) research program. This five-year cross-cultural study, funded by the Japanese government, will examine the impact of digital inclusion on healthy aging in older people from participating countries.
SMART HEALTH IN HAND
Sixty-seven-year-old Saramma Joseph, a resident of Kuala Lumpur is no stranger to the health struggles that come with aging. For decades, she was a primary caretaker for an older relative: first her mother through years of vascular dementia, then her mother-in-law through years of Alzheimer’s disease.
“Back then, we struggled to even understand that these were diseases, let alone how to manage them,” Joseph told Asian Scientist Magazine.
The advent of connectivity technologies would put more power in Joseph’s hands. Her desperate search for information, in her mother’s time, meant weeks of faxed queries to specialists overseas. By 2004, however, not only could she email healthcare providers for immediate queries, she could also access a wealth of online educational materials on her mother-in law’s condition.
Today, Joseph’s own health struggles involve reduced mobility following bouts of illness, as well as chronic but intermittent heart palpitations. The latter, she said, took 27 years to be formally diagnosed. She credits the smartwatch her grandson, himself a gerontologist, gave her in 2016 for catching proof of her supraventricular tachycardia—caused by what she described as “an extra wire” in her heart.
“[Earlier] tests in the hospital always turned out fine; but the smartwatch caught the episodes that happened day-to-day. My grandson could monitor the data and see evidence, even from the UK where he was working, of a problem I’d been trying to get acknowledged for decades,” said Joseph. “When I showed that data to a local cardiologist, he immediately took my story seriously.”
Home-based digital health solutions like Joseph’s smartwatch are increasingly vital to keep older people living independently linked to care services in a nation that, like many of its peers in Asia, is growing older as a whole, Mohd Nazim bin Mohtar told Asian Scientist Magazine. Nazim heads the Laboratory of Medical Gerontology and Gerontechnology at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM).
“By UN standards, Malaysia’s already an aging nation, with over 7 percent of our population aged 65 years and above,” he said. “Projections estimate that by 2045, we’ll be classified as super-aged, with that age demographic making up over 20 percent of the population.”
Japan is already a super-aged country; China, South Korea and Singapore are projected to become the same by 2050. “However, unlike countries like Japan, more advanced and costly high-tech health solutions like advanced personal mobility devices or robotic aides aren’t currently viable in Malaysia, as we don’t have the surrounding public infrastructure to support them,” Nazim added.
At that scale, resources for full-time residential care for older people are also severely limited. At UPM—another partner university in AGELESS—Nazim and his colleagues are working with partners from Japan’s Nara University to develop smartwatch-based Internet of Things tools that can help monitor the health of older people living at home, keeping them connected full-time with caregivers and healthcare services.
“We’re looking at how health monitoring devices in ‘smart’ homes can help with keeping the elderly connected to health services, especially those staying alone, while simultaneously respecting their privacy,” said Nazim. “Beds with internet-connected heat sensors, smartphone based fall detection devices, as well as motion sensors could be integrated in a network that alerts caregivers and healthcare professionals about any abnormalities in real time. This could support aging-in-place, which studies show provide better quality of life than residential care.”
Joseph and the SMF members share Nazim’s outlook: they are happier spending their golden years among familiar faces and places and are enthusiastic about how today’s technologies help them stay active, physically and mentally. Joseph, unable to drive, uses the services of an e-hailing driver instead of depending on family to help her get to places. Keeping in touch with old friends from her school days in India is also easier with text messaging. Lim checks in regularly on SMF members, especially those who live alone and coordinates Bible classes, social lunches and outings with the group, all digitally.
“I don’t know what we’d do without them. I think these tools are wonderful in that they don’t just help us look out for ourselves, but also for each other,” said Lim.
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This article was first published in the print version of Asian Scientist Magazine, January 2024.
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Design: Shelly Liew/ Asian Scientist Magazine
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