The Role of Healthcare Robotics in Providing Support to Older Adults: a Socio-ecological Perspective

Abstract

Purpose of ReviewIn this review, we provide an overview of how healthcare robotics can facilitate healthy aging, with an emphasis on physical, cognitive, and social supports. We next provide a synthesis of future challenges and considerations in the development and application of healthcare robots. We organize these considerations using a socio-ecological perspective and discuss considerations at the individual, care partner, community healthcare, and healthcare policy levels. Recent Findings Older adults are the fastest growing segment of the US population. Age-related changes and challenges can present difficulties, for older adults want to age healthily and maintain independence. Technology, specifically healthcare robots, has potential to provide health supports to older adults. These supports span widely across the physical, cognitive, and social aspects of healthy aging. Summary Our review suggests that while healthcare robotics has potential to revolutionize the way in which older adults manage their health, there are many challenges such as clinical effectiveness, technology acceptance, health informatics, and healthcare policy and ethics. Addressing these challenges at all levels of the healthcare system will help ensure that healthcare robotics promote healthy aging and are applied safely, effectively, and reliably.

The adoption of socially assistive robots for long-term care: During COVID-19 and in a post-pandemic society

“…Policies can be put in place to help safeguard and regulate data collection and data sharing. 30 A main technical challenge to implementing social robots in a healthcare environment, as we have seen in our study and which is an area of ongoing research, is speech recognition. 31 Noisy environments, such as a lobby or front entrance of a healthcare facility, make it difficult for robots to detect speech, particularly if there are multiple people talking at once.…”

Companion robots for older adults: Rodgers’ evolutionary concept analysis approach

“…Currently, limited evidence demonstrates that robots enable aging people to continue living at home [ 82 ]. Recent reviews have reported that many technological intervention studies targeting older people lack quantitative outcomes as a part of their evaluation process, and there is a lack of consensus as to which outcomes to use [ 32 , 83 ]. Several studies were conducted in laboratories and hospital clinics.…”

Assistive Healthcare Robotics – Challenges in Nursing Service Innovation: Critical Review

“…The literature has proposed frameworks that consider the role of robotics across the socioecological levels of healthcare -identifying specific challenges at each level and considerations pertaining to the design, development, and implementation of healthcare robots [40]. The attitude, ability, and doubts of healthcare professionals about the use of advanced technology can affect the use of care robots [39].…”