A volunteer teaches seniors how to use smartphones during a lecture in Taicang, East China's Jiangsu province in May. [Photo/taicangdaily.com]

Taicang in East China's Jiangsu province recently initiated a program aiming to teach seniors how to use smartphones to access public services.

The 7th national demographic census showed that Taicang now has 174,758 seniors aged 60 years old and above, accounting for 21.03 percent of the city's total population.

Starting from May, the senior care program will include 200 offline training sessions, involving more than 10,000 seniors.

In late May, a lecture was held as part of the teaching program that taught a group of seniors how to use the Health Taicang app so that they can make an appointment with doctors. Participating students of the lecture had an average age of around 80 years old.

One of the students was 64-year-old Gao Xia who praised the lecture for being "very timely", adding that "people at our age need such training."

After class, these students will receive a handbook that includes detailed guidelines of how to shop, travel, and find medical services on smartphones.

Lu Wenchao, secretary-general of the Taicang Aged Care Service Industry Association, said that each time after the training class, volunteers will send out questionnaires to the seniors asking for their advice regarding their follow-up needs in learning.

"If some seniors speak about their desire to learn how to take photos or edit videos, we will take that into consideration and make our training program more customized," said Lu.