Intention to use and perceived satisfaction with a digital tool for dementia prevention among the Dutch general public: a cross-sectional study

The increasing prevalence of dementia coincides with a shrinking healthcare workforce, highlighting the importance of dementia prevention. Digital health tools are smart devices and connected equipment that improve health and can be used by individuals themselves, such as apps, platforms, or wearables. These tools can be used to empower people in the general population to take care of their brain health and dementia prevention. We aimed to exploratively investigate the intention to use and perceived satisfaction with MijnBreincoach, a Dutch digital tool for dementia prevention among the general public, and their associated variables. For this observational, cross-sectional study, data was gathered via convenience and purposive sampling using a questionnaire among cognitively unimpaired people and people with self-reported cognitive complaints. The questionnaire covered variables, including gender, age, employment situation, educational attainment, perceived financial scarcity, health literacy, dementia risk, motivation for dementia prevention-related behaviour change, digital proficiency, digital acceptability, and technology adoption. MijnBreincoach was included as a use case to assess the outcome variables ‘intention to use’ and ‘perceived satisfaction’. Analyses included exploratory descriptives, correlations, and robust backward stepwise regression using Generalized Linear Models with 5-fold cross-validation. Study participants (n = 673; mean age = 60.6 ± 13.9; female = 68%; education (low = 26.1%; medium = 35%; high = 38.9%)) had a mean intention to use of 3.1 ± 3 (min = 1; max = 5) and mean perceived satisfaction of 6.4 ± 2.4 (min = 0; max = 10). Educational attainment, digital proficiency, digital acceptability, technology adoption, and cues to action explain almost half (44%) of the variance in intention to use. For perceived satisfaction, 28.2% of the variance was explained by digital proficiency and technology adoption. In general, the Dutch general public has a moderate intention to use and perceived satisfaction with a digital tool for dementia prevention. Yet, large variation in scores was observed, which provides opportunity to tailor support for the use of these digital tools to different target groups.