EXISTING KNOWLEDGE ASSOCIATED WITH SMART HOME HEALTH TECHNOLOGIES IN THE CARE OF OLDER PERSONS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Abstract

As a greater part of the global population reaches the golden age, smart home technologies are said to allow older persons to remain independent at a place of residence, or “home”, of their own choice. Though their development has been making their way to the market, there has not been a systematic review of the empirical literature on the knowledge associated with their use for persons who are 65 years or older. Hence, we conducted a systematic review of empirical peer-reviewed English, German, and French articles in ten electronic databases. Data was textually described, separated into key characteristics, logged into a customized data extraction document, and analysed using narrative synthesis. The search across ten databases revealed 144 empirical papers that were admissible to our inclusion criteria. Of which, we discovered 5 first-order categories of benefits and 5 of barriers of smart home health technologies with further sub-themes that together form the concurrent array of existing knowledge. These categories included, for example, allows older persons to live independently at home, reminds older persons to promote self-care, and alternatively, concerns about usability, cost, and social acceptance. These systematically-derived categories of benefits and barriers could be a starting point for researchers interested in caregiving for older persons to conduct further empirical and reflective research. Furthermore, having this understanding of existing challenges and opportunities associated with smart home health technologies then allows the research and technical communities to collaborate upon a joint foundation to inform policy and improve caregiving for the global aging population.