Smart Glasses for Older Adults With Cognitive Impairment: A Scoping Review.
Brittany F Burch, Jinwei Gu, Gail Betz and 4 others
PMID 40882953WHAT IT FOUND
Smart glasses for older adults with cognitive impairment are mostly early prototypes or low-quality studies.
Tested glasses had marginal to good usability, but weight, fall fear, distraction, and navigation problems remain concerns.
Key findings
01Of 13 included articles, only 6 tested smart glasses, and only 1 tested them exclusively among older adults with cognitive impairment.
02Five older adult testing studies mainly reported usability and acceptability.
03All included studies were rated low quality, and the tested studies were generally poor for small samples of 4 to 30 and lack of a comparison group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Only 13 articles were included, and 7 of them described development or theoretical use without testing. Only 6 articles tested smart glasses, and only 1 tested them exclusively among older adults with cognitive impairment. All included studies were rated low quality. The tested studies were generally poor for small samples of 4 to 30 and lack of a comparison group. Most included studies were published between 2016 and 2019, so they did not reflect newer commercial smart glasses. Non-English studies were excluded, which may have omitted relevant articles. Outcomes were mainly usability and acceptability, not long-term effectiveness, safety, or daily functioning.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural. No author conflict declaration is provided in the supplied text.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the marginal to good usability reports as evidence that smart glasses work for older adults with cognitive impairment. Most studies did not test them, all were rated low quality, and only one tested them exclusively among older adults with cognitive impairment.