Research on the Digital Divide in Smart Healthcare for the Elderly under Portugal’s “National Digital Strategy - Digital Simplification” Policy

The launch of Portugal’s “National Digital Strategy - Digital Simplification” policy signifies the country’s determination for digital development and application, comprehensively covering sectors such as education, healthcare, elderly care, and public administration. The elderly, as the largest group demanding healthcare services, face a significant digital divide problem in the context of smart healthcare development. This paper, based on the definition of core concepts and guided by the theory of digital governance, investigates the digital divide in smart healthcare for the elderly under the Portuguese policy from three dimensions: the access divide, the usage divide, and the outcome divide. The research findings indicate that the elderly in Portugal face issues such as inadequate access to network environments and smart healthcare devices, insufficient willingness to use smart healthcare, and diminished accessibility to smart healthcare services. Based on these findings, and grounded in Portugal’s “National Digital Strategy - Digital Simplification” policy, the study proposes corresponding governance countermeasures from three aspects: improving the top-level design and supporting measures for elderly smart healthcare services; promoting multi-party collaboration to eliminate the elderly’s resistance to smart healthcare; and enhancing the equity and effectiveness of smart healthcare usage among the elderly. This research aims to provide a reference for Portugal to better advance the multi-party collaborative governance of the “digital divide” in elderly healthcare under the “National Digital Strategy - Digital Simplification” context, and to effectively improve the accessibility, equity, and convenience of healthcare for the elderly in the digital age.