Perspectives on technology use in the context of caregiving: Interview study among care partners of persons with dementia (Preprint)

BACKGROUND It is critical to support persons with dementia and their care partners to minimize the diseases impact at individual, family, and societal levels. One emerging and potentially widely available avenue for support is technology (e.g., smartphones/smart homes). OBJECTIVE We aimed to further understand care partner technology use, attitudes, and the potential role for off-the shelf technologies (e.g., smartphones/smart homes) to support caregiving by hearing from those who were caregiving for persons with dementia. METHODS We conducted a telephone-delivered cross-sectional survey using random digit dialling to sample and survey 67 self-identified care partners of persons with dementia across Saskatchewan. Participants were asked about attitudes towards technology, barriers and facilitators for technology use, technology use with caregiving, and demographic information. Eight open-ended questions were analyzed using content analysis; two closed ended questions about comfort with and helpfulness of technology were descriptively analyzed. From these data, an in-depth semi-structured interview was created and conducted with 10 randomly sampled care partners from the initial collection approximately one year later. These in-depth interviews were subsequently analyzed with content analysis. RESULTS Care partners were relatively comfortable with technology, using it for functional tasks and some caregiving. Barriers to technology use were identified, including cost, lack of knowledge, security/privacy concerns, and undesirable features. Facilitators included access to support, and presence of desirable features. Some care partners were merging technology with caregiving and seeing benefit. Others were concerned that technology would not be feasibly adopted for caregiving due to impairment, caregiving philosophy, or fear of negative consequences for the person living with dementia. COVID-19 increased technology use and may have changed perceived usefulness of technology. CONCLUSIONS Though the two analyses were conducted separately, there was notable overlap in the data suggesting temporal stability of identified content. Both analyses suggested care partners relative comfort with technology, using it functionally and for caregiving. There was also overlap in identified barriers, and concerns about the integration of technology and caregiving. Care partner’s reports of increased technology use throughout COVID-19 may also suggest that the pandemic impacted their perceptions of the usefulness of technology. Future investigations should examine how to support care partners in adopting relevant technology.