Remote Healthcare for Elderly People Using Wearables: A Review

Abstract

The growth of health care spending on older adults with chronic diseases faces major concerns that require effective measures to be adopted worldwide. Among the main concerns is whether recent technological advances now offer the possibility of providing remote health care for the aging population. The benefits of suitable prevention and adequate monitoring of chronic diseases by using emerging technological paradigms such as wearable devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) can increase the detection rates of health risks to raise the quality of life for the elderly. Specifically, on the subject of remote health monitoring in older adults, a first approach is required to review devices, sensors, and wearables that serve as tools for obtaining and measuring physiological parameters in order to identify progress, limitations, and areas of opportunity in the development of health monitoring schemes. For these reasons, a review of articles on wearable devices was presented in the first instance to identify whether the selected articles addressed the needs of aged adults. Subsequently, the direct review of commercial and prototype wearable devices with the capability to read physiological parameters was presented to identify whether they are optimal or usable for health monitoring in older adults.

Keywords: elderly; healthcare; monitoring; sensors; wearables.

Figure 1

Common physiological variables and the parts of the body to which their readings are normally associated.

Figure 2

PRISMA flow diagram of the search strategy.

Figure 3

Percentage of reviewed devices classified by wearable category.

Figure 4

Percentage of reviewed devices classified by their FDA status.

Figure 5

Percentage of reviewed devices useful for a particular disease.

Figure 6

Percentages of reviewed research devices classified by device type.