Technology for activity participation in older people with mild cognitive impairment or dementia: expert perspectives and a scoping review.
Stacey L Schepens Niemiec, Elissa Lee, Raquel Saunders and 2 others
PMID 36067094WHAT IT FOUND
Digital health tools for older adults with dementia mostly support daily tasks and social connection, but rarely address leisure, sleep, or work.
Experts warn that poor design and lack of tailored training limit uptake, especially for those with less tech experience.
Key findings
01Most digital health technologies in the literature target activities of daily living, social participation, and instrumental activities of daily living, with very few addressing leisure, rest, sleep, or work.
02Experts identified that technology design often fails to accommodate the specific needs of people with dementia, noting that mainstream devices are not well-designed for them and that simplicity must be balanced with dignity.
03The literature lacks detailed reporting on instructional strategies, which experts consider critical for successful technology adoption in this population.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The scoping review was limited to English-language publications and excluded grey literature, potentially missing relevant non-Western studies. Most included studies were small-scale pilots or feasibility studies with short intervention periods, limiting the evidence for long-term efficacy. Expert interviews were limited to surface-level content analysis and most participants were from the USA, restricting the cultural perspective. No experts interviewed were people with dementia themselves, so the findings reflect professional and caregiver perspectives rather than direct user experience.
Declared interests
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret this as evidence that digital health technologies effectively improve activity participation. The review found that most studies were small pilots with limited outcomes, and experts noted significant barriers to uptake. The value of these tools remains unproven in large-scale trials.