For aging populations to benefit from advances in healthcare technology, countries must promote digital health literacy

In November, leaders will gather for the Second World Summit for Social Development (World Social Summit) in Doha, Qatar. This forum provides an opportunity for governments, development officials, and healthcare leaders across the world to determine how to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) and digital technologies to promote societal inclusion and personal health and wellbeing.

Unfortunately, when it comes to human talent, AI or digital adoption action plans—be they national or multilateral—tend to focus on reskilling for younger populations. The importance of digital reskilling for older populations to empower their productivity, health, and social welfare should be a strategic priority, as well. Attention to this population segment is increasingly paramount considering that people aged sixty-five and older compose the fastest-growing demographic group in the world, especially in low-and-middle-income countries.

It is encouraging that the World Social Summit’s Doha Political Declaration, which will be officially adopted at the Summit, acknowledges the importance of digital and social inclusion encompassing older populations. But policymakers should also incorporate adequate training and trust frameworks for reskilling aging populations into their infrastructure development goals. Countries are making considerable investments to ramp up their digital infrastructure. If these efforts are not paired with a reskilling capacity, leaders risk excluding a growing older adult population from full societal and economic participation. How effectively the summit addresses this issue will help determine countries’ preparedness for major forthcoming technological and demographic shifts.

Digital literacy for older populations: A super-determinant of social development

For older adult populations to benefit from new applications of AI and digital technologies in healthcare, digital and AI literacy is essential. Research indicates that AI healthcare tools could potentially improve the detection and diagnosis of chronic diseases and help medical professionals make swifter clinical decisions.

While global life expectancy has increased over the decades, individual healthspan (or the number of years lived disease-free) has lagged behind life expectancy, with a gap of 9.6 years. A major driver of this gap is the pervasiveness of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), including Alzheimer’s, dementia, cancer, and heart disease, which are most prevalent in populations older than fifty. The capacity of an individual to use technologies to manage their own health, referred to as digital health literacy, is characterized as a super-determinant of health. Digital health literacy may play a role in extending both life expectancy and healthspan related to NCDs management, particularly among older populations.

The triple barrier: Challenges to digital health adoption

Policymakers must grapple with three interlocking barriers that make it difficult to engage older populations with digital tools: insufficient infrastructure, low trust, and inadequate design.

Globally, the digital divide remains stark. In developed economies, 90 percent of people have internet access, while only 27 percent of those living in developing economies do. This gap is exacerbated for aging populations ages sixty and over, who are disproportionately offline compared to their more connected younger counterparts. Digital health literacy is a prerequisite for a population to benefit from AI-driven healthcare. The absence of this literacy can cause severe complications, including delayed diagnoses, poor adherence to treatment plans, and patient absenteeism.

Another barrier to the adoption of digital health services is trust. Older adults often view digital healthcare with skepticism, fearing data breaches, unclear terms of use, or inadequate quality control. In the United States, 60 percent of patients that consider using a health app decide not to over privacy concerns. Overcoming this lack of trust requires transparent communication, the reinforcement of safety protocols, and endorsements from trusted authorities.

Even with digital connectivity and training, digital health tools will not be widely adopted if they are poorly designed. User experience research shows that technical jargon, cognitive overload, impersonal interfaces, and mismatched engagement methods reduce uptake. By contrast, personalization—such as tailoring messages to a patient’s context and communication preferences—has been shown to significantly increase adherence to preventive behaviors.

Lessons from national initiatives to increase digital health literacy

Here are four approaches policymakers and civil society actors at the World Social Summit can look to when implementing the commitments to digital inclusion outlined in the Doha Political Declaration:

• Promote the rollout of national digital health literacy programs for older adults. Such programs can help older adult populations access the benefits of digital health tools. India’s Understanding of Lifelong Learning for All in Society, a government-sponsored literacy program for citizens aged fifteen and above who missed the opportunity to attend school, is one example of such an initiative. Through virtual modules and volunteer support, citizens are trained in general skills, including digital and health literacy. This program could serve as a useful model for the creation of more targeted literacy programs focused on providing older adults with digital health literacy skills they may not be able to learn elsewhere.
• Encourage local governments to tie digital skills training to digital infrastructure investments. This approach can help make the most of technology deployment by combining it with community-based engagement projects. With a bottom-up approach, in Kebbi State, Nigeria, the Medicaid Cancer Foundation-Patience Access to Cancer Care, began increasing awareness about the importance of early detection and prevention of cancer with community leaders and a peer-to-peer outreach model. Once this network of trust was established, the program was able to effectively strengthen patient management through the digitalization of follow-up care and the establishment of a State Cancer Registry to systematically track cases.
• Promote national programs that train community leaders to be digital skills educators. Trusted community leaders can help overcome negative perceptions of digital health tools. In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service’s BP@Home program trained community health workers to empower patients with home blood pressure management. BP@Home has reached over 220,000 participants since 2020. Using a step-by-step approach with phone calls, leaflets, and a dedicated app, this model ensures that patients, especially older adults, not only have the technology but also the skills and confidence to manage their blood pressure.
• Incorporate user perspectives in the elaboration of AI skilling policies. Building trust in AI technologies demands multisector collaboration with older adults as the end users. A transdisciplinary trust framework can help bridge these perspectives, linking scientific insights on ethics and reliability with the experiences and concerns of older populations. By embedding trust-building into digital health strategies, such frameworks can ensure that AI tools are not only technically sound but socially legitimate, culturally sensitive, and aligned with the values of their users. This approach is especially vital in lower- and middle-income countries, where skepticism, lower digital literacy rates, and infrastructural gaps intersect most acutely.

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Policymakers at the World Social Summit should commit to skilling aging populations—from infrastructure investment to user design, from trust-building to training—to achieve sustainable and resilient social protection systems. The action plans of today will shape the health equity landscape of tomorrow. If leaders fail to act, the digital and health divides will grow. If they act decisively, advances in AI and digital health technologies could become powerful equalizers in global health for decades to come.

Vijeth Iyengar is a nonresident senior fellow at the ’s GeoTech Center. The views reflected in the article are the author’s views and do not necessarily reflect the views of his employer.

Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu is a senior advisor at the Federal Ministry of Health Nigeria and president-elect of the Union for International Cancer Control.

Héctor Pourtalé is a global public health consultant and former executive director of Movement Health Foundation.

Frank Krueger is a professor at the School of Systems Biology, George Mason University and honorary professor at the University of Mannheim.

Image: A view of the Doha, Qatar skyline on December 4, 2023. Hongbin via Unsplash.