JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

That the increasing number of older people requiring care, will surpass the available caregivers is a contemporary and global challenge and solutions are needed to help older people maintain their health, prevent disability, and delay or avoid dependency on others. Technology can enable older people to age in place while maintaining their dignity and quality of life and literature reviews on this topic have become important tools for researchers, practitioners, policy makers, and decision-makers who need to navigate and access the available evidence. There is a need for a comprehensive review of reviews that provides an overview of the range and characteristics of the evidence on technology for ageing in place.

Objective:

To explore the characteristics and the range of evidence on technologies for ageing in place by conducting a scoping review of reviews and present an evidence map that researchers, policy makers and practitioners may use to identify gaps and reviews of interest.

Methods:

The review was conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Literature searches were conducted in Web of science, PubMed and Scopus using a search string that consisted of the terms "older people" and "technology for ageing in place" with alternate terms utilizing Boolean operators and truncation, adapted to the rules for each database.

Results:

A total of 5447 studies were screened, with 344 studies included after full text screening. The number of reviews on this topic has increased dramatically over time and the literature is scattered across a variety of journals. Vocabularies and approaches used to describe technology, and deal with populations and problems are highly heterogeneous. We have identified three principal ways that reviews have dealt with populations, five strategies that the reviews draw on to conceptualize technology and four principal types of problems that they have dealt with. These may be understood as methods that can inform future reviews on this topic. The relationships between populations, technologies and problems studied in the reviews are presented in an evidence map and identifies pertinent gaps.

Conclusions:

Redundancies and unexploited synergies between bodies of evidence on technology for ageing in place is highly likely. The results of this review can be used to decrease this risk if they are used as methods to inform the design of future reviews on this topic. There is a need for a comprehensive examination of the current state of the art in knowledge on technology for aging in place in LMICs, especially in Africa.