UC Davis

AbstractBackground: Dementia presents significant health and care challenges around the world. Caring for people with dementia could adversely impact the informal caregiver’s physical, psychological, and financial health. As such, various technologies have been developed to help minimize the burden and improve the well-being of caregivers when caring for people with dementia. These assistive technologies include motion detectors, tracking systems, telehealth, and caregiver platforms, to name a few. However, caregivers’ experiences are often ignored when designing these assistive technologies. This review focuses on published literature on informal caregivers’ providing care to persons with dementia and whether assistive technologies aid in reducing caregiver burden.

Methods: The systematic review involved a systematic search of the OVID Medline database following pre-defined inclusion and exclusion criteria in identifying appropriate quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method studies meeting the objective.

Results: The studies reported the potential to reduce burden and stress among caregivers. However, while providing care to persons with dementia, there was no significant change in the stress reduction or amount of burden the caregivers experienced with the AT intervention.

Conclusions: From the review, it was evident that various assistive technologies have positive and negative effects when used in dementia care. As such, assistive technology interventions should be customized for specific settings and caregivers.

Keywords: dementia, assistive technology, informal caregivers, the burden