eHealth Research Institute, School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, China.
J Healthc Eng. 2021 Jan 26;2021:6651786. doi: 10.1155/2021/6651786. eCollection 2021.
Digital divide has been a major obstacle for mobile health services for the elderly in developing countries; to assess the potential solution to narrow digital divide among the elderly, we use data from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) and test for a causal role of social capital in digital access among elderly individuals in China. To handle endogenous problems associated with social capital, we introduce instrumental variable (IV) estimates in our models. Our data analysis shows that social capital facilitates increased digital access. We distinguish between two digital access patterns, an infrastructure pattern and a personal device pattern, and find that the causal effect of social capital is determined by the personal device pattern. Therefore, since family members and relatives increase digital access among elderly people, we propose a family-centered mobile health policy in developing countries.
数字鸿沟一直是发展中国家移动医疗服务的主要障碍；为了评估缩小老年人数字鸿沟的潜在解决方案，我们使用了中国健康与养老追踪调查（CHARLS）的数据，并测试了社会资本在中国老年人数字接入中的因果作用。为了解决与社会资本相关的内生性问题，我们在模型中引入了工具变量（IV）估计。数据分析表明，社会资本有助于增加数字接入。我们区分了两种数字接入模式，一种是基础设施模式，另一种是个人设备模式，并发现社会资本的因果效应取决于个人设备模式。因此，由于家庭成员和亲戚增加了老年人的数字接入，我们在发展中国家提出了以家庭为中心的移动医疗政策。
