Call for technology and age-friendly cities

Elderly couple holding remote home control system

An Open University academic is calling for technology to be a consideration in the 8-domain model developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which describes an age-friendly city.

Dr Hannah Marston, Research Fellow in the OU’s Faculty of Wellbeing, Educations and Language Studies and Dr Joost van Hoof, Professor of Urban Ageing at De Haagse Hogeschool / The Hague University of Applied Sciences, have published a paper on this theme entitled: “Who Doesn’t Think about Technology When Designing Urban Environments for Older People?” A Case Study Approach to a Proposed Extension of the WHO’s Age-Friendly Cities Model in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The paper discusses the gaps in the WHO’s age-friendly cities model in the field of technology and provides insights and recommendations for expansion of the model for application in the context of countries with a high human development index that wish to be fully age-friendly.

Read the full paper

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