IoT-based systems and applications for elderly healthcare: a systematic review

This paper systematically reviews previous studies about Internet of Things (IoT)-based systems and applications for elderly healthcare. The review aims to achieve several objectives. Firstly, it seeks to classify the healthcare categories and research areas addressed in the reviewed studies. Secondly, it aims to explore the current trends in terms of main ideas, contributions, and limitations, providing insights for future research directions. Lastly, it presents distributions of the research works based on healthcare categories, area studies, publication years, and publishers. The review process follows the guidelines of Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) to ensure a rigorous examination of the selected papers. A total of 54 academic papers, published in peer-reviewed venues between 2018 and 2022, were included in the review, making it the first of its kind. The results indicate that IoT-based technologies play a significant role in creating systems and applications to support the elderly across various healthcare categories, including health promotion, health prevention, health treatment, and health rehabilitation. There are several area studies identified as (1) security, (2) platforms, infrastructure, and architecture, (3) designs and developments, (4) analytics, models, and algorithms, (5) frameworks, (6) hardware and devices, (7) computer systems. Among the healthcare categories, health monitoring in the health rehabilitation category and fall detection for health prevention category emerged as the most commonly addressed topics. In terms of publication trends, the majority of relevant papers were published in 2021. The research area with the highest number of papers was designs and developments, with ScienceDirect being the most prominent publisher for this research. Overall, this systematic review provides valuable insights into the field of IoT-based systems and applications for elderly healthcare. These findings can guide future studies and contribute to the advancement of IoT-based solutions for elderly healthcare.