Assistive Technology for Active and Independent Aging

Abstract

Due to a rising number of older population groups, there is a need to prolong an active life of elderly people, who are ready and want to lead active and quality life in a sense of their inclusion, socialization and independence. Especially, the independence in their everyday activities is crucial for them. In this process, assistive technology seems to play a promising role. The purpose of this article is to discuss the role of assistive technology (AT) for active and independent aging, summarize its benefits and constraints for the elderly people, as well as describe its types. The methods include a method of literature search of available sources describing this issue in the world’s databases Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed, and a method of comparison and evaluation of the findings of the selected studies on the research topic. The findings of all the detected studies confirmed that the use of AT had a positive impact on the enhancement of active and independent living of the elderly people. Most of the trials researched the effectiveness of AT on the enhancement of physical conditions of healthy older people, followed by social assistive robots, memory aid systems, or protection AT. Nevertheless, it is important to target all AT devices at meeting both the elderly people’s and their caregivers’ individual needs. Therefore, developers should tailor these technological devices to the needs of the elderly people, which can be achieved through multidisciplinary cooperation of all interested stakeholders such the end-users, their caregivers, developers, and possibly, doctors.