Health–Related ICT Solutions of Smart Environments for Elderly–Systematic Review

Abstract

By improving the quality of life and extending the length of life, Western society is becoming an increasingly ageing population with a higher proportion of seniors. From another point of view, there is a critical shortage of care staff, both in hospitals and for in-home care. Thanks to new technology trends such as Smart Homes and Smart Furniture, there is an opportunity for increased support for seniors by utilizing new technologies. This paper presents the current trends and possibilities in applying smart information and communications technology (ICT) solutions for in-home care concerning diseases in old age. The paper consists of a systematic review according to the PRISMA methodology of the available literature in Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Springer, and the Espacenet patent database. Publications report the usage of some types of artificial intelligence and their implementation and non-intrusive sensing technologies. The patents review identified solutions with a focus on monitoring the state of older adults and mobility improvement. Existing ICT smart solutions must address the following issues: (1) ease-of-use; (2) invisibility and disuse that isolate older adults; (3) privacy and security; (4) affordability of technology in terms of cost; and (5) supporting elderly individuals to stay in their homes or move in different environments independently. There is a significant gap between a large number of scientific publications and commercial solutions. The existing products reflect the specifics of the diseases in a rather wider context instead of the fulfilment of exact needs. It is often stated that such devices can be used across diseases, but the direct connection and benefits for the disease is still rather weak. The challenge remains to tap the existing potential of a large number of innovative ideas on the market and improve the quality of life.

The Collaborative Aging Research Using Technology Initiative: An Open, Sharable, Technology-Agnostic Platform for the Research Community

“…Despite this rapid evolution, or perhaps because of this high pace of development, this state of the art has yet to result in wide adoption of digital approaches in aging research beyond rather narrow focused use of various wearables or apps. Prior smart home or pervasive computing platforms for aging research have demonstrated the feasibility and potential of such platforms to uniquely inform research [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. However, several barriers to their proliferation have been identified.…”

“…Many specific technologies and uses of remote monitoring have been developed to advance aging research [e.g., [5][6][7][8]. These advances have tended to benefit a relatively small community of specialty research; the broader gerontological research communities have not seen more widespread uptake of these methods, despite the demonstrated feasibility and potential of smart home and pervasive computing platforms to uniquely inform aging research and healthcare of older adults [9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. A number of barriers have prevented sensor-based and remote monitoring research from becoming ubiquitous: technical challenges, a lack of standards, team science requirements and lack of specialty expertise, narrow real-world use cases, proprietary algorithms and other access-limiting intellectual property rights, and costs.…”

Quality of Life Framework for Personalised Ageing: A Systematic Review of ICT Solutions

“…It is important to note that it is hard to compare this part of the results, which are related to the proposed framework (the first aim of the study), to other studies given that the existing reviews and studies that have proposed frameworks [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40] have not addressed personalised ageing and QoL improvement for older adults through the prism of ICT solutions. Many ICT solutions are proposed with the target to prolong and support the independent living of older adults and provide help for professional and informal carers [41].…”

“…In order to build an ecosystem that could satisfy the needs of carers, these ICT solutions should provide older adults with control over the timing and the place for monitoring their health [27], while at the same time reducing the stress on hospital capacity and care institutions [42,43]. However, there is a lack of standards, safety and interoperability of these ICT solutions, as well as methods for validation and verification methods in order to demonstrate the sustainability and reliability of ICT solutions for older adults [34]. Therefore, the awareness of the potential ICT solutions for personalised ageing among different stakeholders should be increased.…”

“…Whilst this framework was published by the World Health Organization in 2007 prior to significant technological developments, such technologies have been embraced by many citizens in their day-to-day lives and it illustrates the capabilities, forward thinking, and planning of existing and future ageing cohorts. There seems to be some implicit recognition of the role technology may play in realising the goals of the age-friendly cities and communities' movement [34].…”