How to prevent technological issues and maximise technologies acceptance by users before implementing large-scale pilots

Background In the context of an ageing population, technological and digital solutions are increasingly emerging in the market to facilitate active and healthy ageing. However, several factors can hinder the acceptance of the solutions by the users. Indeed, during the development of digital solutions, future users are generally involved only when a Large-Scale Pilot is set up. It implies around 1 year and more than 100 people involved and it costs money. Moreover, if technical problems appear during the using of the solutions, the acceptance of it is sub-optimal or even degraded. Methods This paper presents the pre-validation approach developed and executed within the Pharaon European project to pre-evaluate digital solutions before to put in place the planned Large-Scale Pilots (LSP). 1 This pre-validation was defined as a Small-Scale Pilot involving a minimum of 5 users per type (e.g. older adults, caregivers, health professional) during a short period of time (2-hour sessions with users). The process was composed of different steps: 1/ pre-validation of individual technologies