RESUMO

BACKGROUND: Digital technologies (digiTech) enhance benefits in healthcare and are present in elderly people lives. Healthcare professionals (HCP) who deal with dementia and related disorders face enormous challenges in delivering healthcare using digital devices, and Covid-19 pandemic showed these pitfalls should be addressed. Technology solutions in elder people are being developed, not every HCP is heard, and we lack information about what these professionals think about this. METHODS: Using structured questionnaires and asynchronous electrotonic data capture, we asked experienced (84.3% postgraduate degrees) HCP with different backgrounds (8 practice areas) about what they think of technology use among their patients and carers. The average person in our sample (N = 51) was a highly skilled (22.2 study-years) female (70.6%) medical doctor (62.8%) aged 39.1 years old (27 to 77 years), highly exposed to digiTech (68.6% mobile devices usage ≥4 hours/day). Neurologists (37.3%), neuropsychologists (15.7%), psychiatrists (13.7%), geriatricians (11.8%) were the most represented groups. This observational cross-sectional study is part of a Brazilian pilot study to explore technology usage in higher risk dementia adults (DigiTAU Project). RESULTS: Although HCP consider asking patients and carers about technology use to be theoretically important (90.2%) and useful in practice (94.2%), they often do not do it (45.1%). There is incongruity when they feel safe to offer interventions by digital means (58.8%) but commonly agree, on average, that HCP are not prepared to use digiTech (51.0%). Despite having positive views towards benefits in adopting digiTech for patients (98.1%), they think they bring more benefits to families and caregivers than to patients themselves (56.9%). HCP consider digiTech will change their practice in the short term within 1 year (58.8%) and within 5 years (88.3%). None of the 8 options suggested as the most "promising" technology in 10 years reaches more than 25% of the choices. CONCLUSIONS: HCP have conflicting views about the usage of technologies by their patients and caregivers but expect some positive changes in their work practice. It suggests new digiTech must be submitted to scrutiny so that its applicability overcomes the challenges. Further studies and analysis are needed to understand better this data.