Acceptance of Assistive Technology by Users with Motor Disabilities Due to Spinal Cord or Acquired Brain Injuries: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Acquired motor limits can be provoked by neurological lesions. Independently of the aetiologies, the lesions require patients to develop new coping strategies and adapt to the changed motor functionalities. In all of these occasions, what is defined as an assistive technology (AT) may represent a promising solution. The present work is a systematic review of the scientific AT-related literature published in the PubMed, Cinahl, and Psychinfo databases up to September 2022. This review was undertaken to summarise how the acceptance of AT is assessed in people with motor deficits due to neurological lesions. We review papers that (1) dealt with adults (≥18 years old) with motor deficits due to spinal cord or acquired brain injuries and (2) concerned user acceptance of hard AT. A total of 615 studies emerged, and 18 articles were reviewed according to the criteria. The constructs used to assess users’ acceptance mainly entail people’s satisfaction, ease of use, safety and comfort. Moreover, the acceptance constructs varied as a function of participants’ injury severity. Despite the heterogeneity, acceptability was mainly ascertained through pilot and usability studies in laboratory settings. Furthermore, ad-hoc questionnaires and qualitative methods were preferred to unstandardized protocols of measurement. This review highlights the way in which people living with acquired motor limits greatly appreciate ATs. On the other hand, methodological heterogeneity indicates that evaluation protocols should be systematized and finely tuned.

Co-designing an interactive artificial intelligent system with post-stroke patients and caregivers to augment the lost abilities and improve their quality of life: a human-centric approach

“…Thus, one of the leading technological improvements regards the interexchange between the end-user and the device. The feature to control the device via thought analysis would represent a robust solution in many cases ( 30 ).…”

Bridging the Gap: Exploring Opportunities, Challenges, and Problems in Integrating Assistive Technologies, Robotics, and Automated Machines into the Health Domain

“…Overall, this Editorial highlighted the interest of scholars in ATs [28][29][30][31], CRs [32][33][34][35], and AMs [36][37][38]. This interest has increased, becoming tremendous in the last three years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.…”