Clinical Perspective on Internet of Things Applications for Care of the Elderly

Abstract

The elderly population is increasing globally, putting more pressure on aged care and public health systems. To address this issue and help increase the independence of older people, different digital technologies, including the Internet of things (IoT), can play an important role. Although there has been an increase in the number of studies in this field, most of them concentrate on IoT applications in elderly care from a technology perspective, with very little contribution from the clinical side. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate and identify the available IoT applications and their clinical utility for common diseases in elderly people. The results of this study could be useful for information technology professionals in developing and understanding the clinical requirements for IoT applications in healthcare for older people. Clinicians will also be informed about the clinical possibilities of using IoT devices in this area. Based on our findings, future research should focus on enhancing the clinical utility of current IoT applications in different settings and on developing new applications to support practitioners and older people.

“Bring Your Own Device”—A New Approach to Wearable Outcome Assessment in Trauma

“…In addition, training programs enhancing the competency of smartphone use in the elderly have demonstrated positive effects [ 13 ]. This trend towards an increased use of wearable technologies to monitor different health conditions in the aging population will likely increase in various fields over the coming years [ 14 , 15 ]. Apart from the age-related availability, no other meaningful trends could be observed from our enrollment statistics.…”

The Internet of Things in Geriatric Healthcare

“…As per the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), one of the possible indicators for the measurement of blood glucose level can be HbA1c (glycated hemoglobin). It has also been experimentally found that an average increase of 2 mmol/L in the blood glucose results in the rise of the HbA1c level by 11 mmol/L [9]. Sensing and measuring HbA1c is still a potential challenge and is being explored as a measurement tool by many researchers.…”

“…Despite the efficient use of technology, most hospitals still rely on the manual monitoring of the urine output of the patients using the urine bag, which may be susceptible to human error. Numerous researches have already been dedicated to designing an IoT-based system [9,94] for measuring urine output. However, these developed systems are still lacking acceptance by health professionals.…”

“…ese devices also provide a platform that can connect patients with healthcare providers through the Internet. Furthermore, such devices allow the collection of a huge amount of data and help to develop more precise clinical guidelines [9]. ese data sources can also be used to develop automated IoT devices for real-time monitoring [10].…”

User Requirements Analysis of an Embodied Conversational Agent for Coaching Older Adults to Choose Active and Healthy Ageing Behaviors during the Transition to Retirement: A Cross-National User Centered Design Study

“…One of such changes is represented by the transition from work to retirement, which generally concerns people aged between 55 and 67 years according to the different pension systems and regulations that vary from country to country. This group of older adults also is in transition from the adulthood to the old age and so they do not fully fall in the traditional demographic and geriatric age and/or care classifications [ 18 , 19 ]. In fact, what defines them are not only age or long-term care needs, but even a multiple set of dimensions among which the level of participation in the society and the position in the labour market.…”