Assessing Mobile and Smart Technology Applications for Active and Healthy Aging using a Fuzzy Collaborative Intelligence Approach

Active and healthy living is critical in an aging society. Mobile and smart technology applications can assist in achieving this goal of healthy living. However, selecting a suitable and smart technology application for active and healthy living is difficult. To address this difficulty, a fuzzy collaborative intelligence (FCI) approach was proposed in this study to assess the suitability of a mobile and smart technology application. The FCI approach is a posterior-aggregation fuzzy analytic hierarchy process approach that combines the fuzzy inverse of column sum, partial-consensus fuzzy intersection, and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution. The FCI approach starts from the prioritization of critical factors using the fuzzy inverse of column sum by each expert. Subsequently, partial-consensus fuzzy intersection is applied to aggregate the priorities derived by all experts. Based on the aggregation result, each mobile and smart technology application for active and healthy aging is assessed using fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to the ideal solution. The FCI approach was applied to assess five existing mobile and smart technology applications, with various aspects of life as parameters. According to experimental results, the most and least suitable mobile technology applications were smart canes and online food ordering and delivery platforms, respectively. This is because the current elderly population is not very familiar with smartphone applications. This problem will be solved over time when the current middle-age population becomes old. In addition, the ranking result obtained using the proposed methodology was considerably different from those using several existing methods. The aging of population is a natural phenomenon. The results of this study are helpful to creating an environment that is friendly and assists elderly people to age actively and healthily.