Development of a LineBot Smartphone Application to increase Physical Fitness and Brain Fitness Activity for Senior Citizens

Development of a LineBot Smartphone Application to increase Physical Fitness and Brain Fitness Activity for Senior Citizens

Taiwan is on the brink of becoming a super-aged society so the government promotes physical fitness tests and group health promotion activities within senior communities to prevent and delay disability in older adults. However, the COVID-19 pandemic suspended community activities, which exacerbated health issues for the elderly. To address the lack of individualized homebased activities, this study develops a user-friendly remote health-promotion platform for seniors.
A LineBot mobile application supports physical and cognitive training and has five key features: (1) users input fitness test results, compare them with age-matched data and receive personalized recommendations; (2) a tool for cognitive function screening; (3) online exercise programs with participation tracking; (4) brain fitness games of varying difficulty to engage users and (5) a backend system to record test results, monitor activity and evaluate cognitive performance.
The platform features user satisfaction of more than 90% for fitness tests, exercise programs and usability. Average user ratings for each function exceed four out of five, which achieves the study’s goals and confirms the platform’s suitability for elderly users. The results show that the LineBot platform is effective and user-friendly for senior health promotion and users express a positive attitude toward the app for at-home physical and cognitive training. This platform supports aging in place and increases the well-being of older adults.