Smart Home Devices for Supporting Older Adults: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Smart home devices have great potential for supporting older adults’ health, safety, and independent living. Past reviews have identified only a few studies on the use of smart home devices for older adults and reported low technology readiness levels for the devices. This article presents a systematic literature review to identify the devices that have been used in studies with older adults, the setting in which those devices have been tested, the evaluation methods of the existing user studies, and the limitations. [Method] ACM DL, Scopus, PubMed, and IEEE Xplore were searched for a set of different keywords that included smart home sensors and older adults. The search was limited to “past ten years" (from the search date). Articles written in English that included user studies evaluating smart home devices with older adults were included. PRISMA guidelines were followed. [Results] 3847 unique articles were identified, 48 of which were included in the review. The articles represented research from a large range of countries. The majority of the studies evaluated the devices in participants’ homes, followed by research lab settings. A few articles used other settings such as care centres and hospitals. The studies mainly evaluated the performance of the systems, followed by users’ evaluations, such as perceptions and acceptance. Many studies had long-term interactions (more than a month). [Conclusion] there are still limited studies on the impact and benefits of smart home devices on older adults’ quality of life, health, or well-being. Future studies are needed to better understand these benefits.