The Journal of Grey System ›› 2024, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (5): 1-14.

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Evaluation of Barriers to Disabled Elderly’s Access to eHealth in China Using Grey Relational Analysis

  

  1. 1. College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China,     2. Center for Grey Systems Studies, Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China.     3. Institute for Grey Systems Studies, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.     4. Institute for Grey Systems and Decision Sciences, GreySys Foundation, Lahore, Pakistan. 
  • Online:2024-10-10 Published:2024-09-11
  • Supported by:
    This work was supported by a long term project of national major talent plan of China (Grant No. YQR20024), a projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.72071111)”, a project of Intelligence Introduction base of the Ministry of Science and Technology (Grant No. G2021181014L), an original Exploration Project of the Central University Research and Innovation Fund (Grant No. ILA220721A23). At the same time, the authors would like to acknowledge the partial support of the Funds for Innovation Team of Shaanxi Sanqin Talents Special Support Program and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Excellent Innovation Team of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (Grant No.[2022]2-22).

Abstract: This study aimed to identify and rank the barriers faced by disabled elderly in China while accessing eHealth primary care services. Primary data were collected from the disabled elderly based on technological, individual, relational, environmental, and organizational constructs. The Dynamic Grey Relational Analysis (DGRA) and Multiple-criteria Decision-making (MCDM) based TOPSIS techniques were used to identify and rank the barriers. We found that the most significant barrier was “aging limitation (reduction in hearing, sight, memory, and fine motor control)” in both (DGRA and MCDM) cases. The Kruskal-Wallis test was used to investigate the significance of this barrier in different age groups of disabled elderly. We found no significant differences among the three age groups of disabled elderly, which shows that the barrier “aging limitation (reduction in hearing, sight, memory, and fine motor control)” is the most significant barrier at each age group (when age ≥ 60) of disabled elderly. The average value of Grey Relational Grades (GRGaverage) and the sorting outcomes of the MCDM of the construct individual were higher than those of all other constructs. This study is the first of its kind to apply the DGRA, MCDM and KWT to expose the barriers while accessing eHealth services for the disabled elderly in China.  

Key words: eHealth, Disabled elderly , Grey relational analysis , Multiple-criteria decision-making , Kruskal-Wallis test