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Geriatric medicine
Research
Scoping review on the use of socially assistive robot technology in elderly care
  1. Jordan Abdi1,
  2. Ahmed Al-Hindawi2,
  3. Tiffany Ng2,
  4. Marcela P Vizcaychipi2
  1. 1 Department of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK
  2. 2 Magill Department of Anaesthesia, Intensive Care Medicine and Pain Management, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, UK
  1. Correspondence to Jordan Abdi; ja1612{at}ic.ac.uk

Abstract

Objective With an elderly population that is set to more than double by 2050 worldwide, there will be an increased demand for elderly care. This poses several impediments in the delivery of high-quality health and social care. Socially assistive robot (SAR) technology could assume new roles in health and social care to meet this higher demand. This review qualitatively examines the literature on the use of SAR in elderly care and aims to establish the roles this technology may play in the future.

Design Scoping review.

Data sources Search of CINAHL, Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLINE, PsychINFO and Scopus databases was conducted, complemented with a free search using Google Scholar and reference harvesting. All publications went through a selection process, which involved sequentially reviewing the title, abstract and full text of the publication. No limitations regarding date of publication were imposed, and only English publications were taken into account. The main search was conducted in March 2016, and the latest search was conducted in September 2017.

Eligibility criteria The inclusion criteria consist of elderly participants, any elderly healthcare facility, humanoid and pet robots and all social interaction types with the robot. Exclusions were acceptability studies, technical reports of robots and publications surrounding physically or surgically assistive robots.

Results In total, 61 final publications were included in the review, describing 33 studies and including 1574 participants and 11 robots. 28 of the 33 papers report positive findings. Five roles of SAR were identified: affective therapy, cognitive training, social facilitator, companionship and physiological therapy.

Conclusions Although many positive outcomes were reported, a large proportion of the studies have methodological issues, which limit the utility of the results. Nonetheless, the reported value of SAR in elderly care does warrant further investigation. Future studies should endeavour to validate the roles demonstrated in this review.

Systematic review registration NIHR 58672.

  • socially assistive robots
  • elderly
  • robots
  • geriatric medicine
  • social medicine

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-018815

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors Design of the review: JA and MPV. Data collection: JA and AA-H. Data analysis and interpretation: JA, TN and MPV. Drafting the article: JA, AA-H and TN. Critical revision of the article: JA, TN and MPV. Final approval of the version to be published: MPV.

    • Funding This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Not required.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement There is no additional unpublished data from this review.

    • Collaborators Peter Forrest; Sundhiya Mandalia.