Ambient Assisted Living and Health-Related Outcomes—A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The active ageing paradigm aims to contribute to the expectation of a long, autonomous, independent and healthy life. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) promotes the development of technological solutions that might have a key role in not only the optimization of support services for older adults but also in the mitigation of their disabilities. This article presents a systematic literature review of how the impact of AAL technologies, products and services is being assessed in terms of its health-related outcomes. The main objective of this article is to contribute to the understanding of how state-of-the-art AAL solutions might influence the health conditions of older adults. The method used to conduct this systematic literature review followed the guidelines of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). The results show that the reviewed articles report not only the use of technological assessment instruments but also instruments to measure health-related outcomes such as quality of life.

Medicaid Becomes the First Third-Party Payer to Cover Passive Remote Monitoring for Home Care: Policy Analysis

“…The past decade has seen a high level of innovation in technology for aging, with numerous governments investing in significant research collaborations, such as the cross-national Ambient Assisted Living Joint Platform of the European Union and the national AGE-WELL Initiative in Canada, launched in 2008 and 2015, respectively. Still, today’s published research is more focused on development rather than the evaluation of impact of devices on health outcomes and lives of older adults [ 17 ]. These technologies hold promise to safely supplement and reduce in-person care, but reviews of the English language literature find that they are being deployed with neither evidence of benefit on individual nor systems outcomes [ 16 - 22 ].…”

Towards Responsible Implementation of Monitoring Technologies in Institutional Care

“…There is more evidence that monitoring technologies may have benefits for some older adults living with chronic disease in noninstitutional settings, including lower risk of death, readmission, reduction of symptoms of depression, and improvements in blood pressure control ( Dinesen et al, 2016 ; Liu, Stroulia, Nikolaidis, Miguel-Cruz, & Rios Rincon, 2016 ; Queiros, Dias, Silva, & Rocha, 2017 ). The use of monitoring technologies may also enhance the freedom of movement of persons living with dementia who are permitted to go outdoors unsupervised ( Bowes, Dawson, & Greasley-Adams, 2012 ).…”

“…There is however little evidence that monitoring technologies can improve clinical outcomes, health-related quality of life, or fall prevention ( Liu et al, 2016 ; Noah et al, 2018 ). Moreover, reviews of monitoring studies in noninstitutional settings consistently emphasize that there is an urgent need for research to more conclusively support claims of benefits, and to bolster providers’ confidence in the clinical validity of monitoring technologies in particular ( Dinesen et al, 2016 ; Queiros et al, 2017 ).…”

Medicaid Becomes the First Third-Party Payer to Cover Passive Remote Monitoring for Home Care: Policy Analysis (Preprint)

“…The past decade has seen a high level of innovation in technology for aging, with numerous governments investing in significant research collaborations, such as the cross-national Ambient Assisted Living Joint Platform of the European Union and the national AGE-WELL Initiative in Canada, launched in 2008 and 2015, respectively. Still, today's published research is more focused on development rather than the evaluation of impact of devices on health outcomes and lives of older adults [17]. These technologies hold promise to safely supplement and reduce in-person care, but reviews of the English language literature find that they are being deployed with neither evidence of benefit on individual nor systems outcomes [16][17][18][19][20][21][22].…”

“…Still, today's published research is more focused on development rather than the evaluation of impact of devices on health outcomes and lives of older adults [17]. These technologies hold promise to safely supplement and reduce in-person care, but reviews of the English language literature find that they are being deployed with neither evidence of benefit on individual nor systems outcomes [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. Furthermore, while more attention is paid by researchers in Europe and in Canada to ethical challenges, we neither understand how to mitigate the risks that older adults face and which pose significant ethical concerns yet [23][24][25] nor do we know how to provide comprehensive and effective systems [6] or how to interpret changes detected by monitoring systems in ways that would enable the prediction of adverse events necessary for an intervention [15].…”