Best Practice Guidance
Human Interaction with Technology in Dementia

Recommendations

3.3

Implementation of technology in dementia care: facilitators & barriers

Successful implementation of technology in dementia care depends not merely on its effectiveness but also on other facilitating or impeding factors related to e.g. the personal living environment (privacy, autonomy and obtrusiveness); the outside world (stigma and human contact); design (personalisability, affordability and safety), and ethics on these subjects.  This section provides recommendations on the implementation of technology in everyday life, for meaningful activities, healthcare technology and technology promoting Social Health.
3.3.6
Social Health Domain 3: Technology to promote social participation
3.3.6.3

Loneliness should be included in future technology intervention studies as an outcome in order to study the effect of active assisted living (AAL) technologies on loneliness of people with dementia in long-term care

Guidance

Implementing assistive technology could be promising in long-term care to address loneliness in dementia, but further studies are needed to tailor assistive technology to people living with dementia in different care settings and to investigate its effect on loneliness.

Explanation and examples

Active & Assisted Living (AAL) technology aims to support coping with the consequences of dementia. A scoping review was conducted to learn if and how AAL addresses loneliness in people living with dementia in long-term care. Although, only one study focused directly on the impact of AAL technology on loneliness, findings suggest that AAL were used in the context of psychosocial interventions and proved to have had an impact on loneliness in people living with dementia. It remains unclear why loneliness was almost never included as an outcome in technology studies. Since we were not able to derive clear effects of assistive technology on loneliness from the included studies, we recommend using loneliness outcome measures in future intervention studies into AAL technology.

Themes

Target groups

Type of evidence

Beliz Budak (DISTINCT ESR15)

Scoping review

References

Budak, K. B., Atefi, G., Hoel, V., Laporte Uribe, F., Meiland, F., Teupen, S. A., Felding, Roes, M. (2021). Can technology impact loneliness in dementia? A scoping review on the role of assistive technologies in delivering psychosocial interventions in long-term care. Disability and Rehabilitation: Assistive Technology. doi.org/10.1080/17483107.2021.1984594

Collaborations

Koh, W. Q., Felding, S. A., Budak, K. B., Toomey, E., & Casey, D. (2021). Barriers and facilitators to the implementation of social robots for older adults and people with dementia: a scoping review. BMC geriatrics, 21(1), 1-17.