A Literature Review on Information Systems Supporting the Physical Wellbeing of Elderly People

Abstract

This paper reviews multi-disciplinary research on information systems supporting the physical wellbeing of the elderly population. By taking a systematic approach, it screens journals, conference proceedings and books on how computer-based systems are used for improving both the health and wellbeing of the most senior individuals. By using different Internet-databases indexing academic publications and a set of conceptual keywords the authors searched for and identified 62 major publications on the topic that were carefully reviewed. Each publication item was classified according different category sets and the aggregated data was then analyzed from different socio-technological perspectives. Our findings suggest that research on the topic is very focused on diseases over health and wellbeing, since most of the studied information systems focused much more on the protective and curative medical procedures over other important dimensions such as prevention, education and health promotion. An overview on what and where the studied systems are used is presented and a new information systems research agenda is proposed.