ArticlePloS one2020
Mobile applications for elderly healthcare: A systematic mapping.
Article in PloS one, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Design Guidelines of Mobile Apps for Older Adults: Systematic Review and Thematic Analysis.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2023Pooled it
- Healthcare applications for elderly: a scoping review and a practical roadmap for developing health apps.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2026Article
- Home-Based Exercise and Fall Prevention in Older Adults: Development, Validation and Usability of theJMIR aging · 2025Article
- Developing and evaluating an intelligent integration system for older adult care and health based on the sport-medicine-tourism model.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Construction and Content Validation of Mobile Devices' Application Messages about Food and Nutrition for DM2 Older Adults.Nutrients · 2024Article
- Community-based interventions for mitigating cognitive-linguistic decline in older adults.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Article
- An age-old problem or an old-age problem? A UK survey of attitudes, historical use and recommendations by healthcare professionals to use healthcare apps.BMC geriatrics · 2023Article
- The Problem of Monitoring the Psycho-Physical Condition of Seniors during Proposed Activities in Urban Space.Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Barriers and Enablers for the Use of Digital Interactive Television in Nursing Home Settings: An Interview Case Study with Older Adults and Professionals.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- The willingness and influencing factors to choose smart senior care among old adults in China.BMC geriatrics · 2022Article
- Successful Aging for Community-Dwelling Older Adults: An Experimental Study with a Tablet App.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Diabetes Self-management Apps: Systematic Review of Adoption Determinants and Future Research Agenda.JMIR diabetes · 2022Review
- Traumatology: Adoption of the Sm@rtEven Application for the Remote Evaluation of Patients and Possible Medico-Legal Implications.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Article
- Comparing Smartphone Apps for Traditional Chinese Medicine and Modern Medicine in China: Systematic Search and Content Analysis.JMIR mHealth and uHealth · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
contextThe increase in the population aging has brought more significant concern about how proper care will be provided to the elderly in the future. Thus, the development of technological solutions for the health domain has gained more prominence. Joining this scenario to the growing use of mobile devices for daily activities, several mobile applications focused on the elderly healthcare have been developed with healthcare and software engineer professionals involved. However, there is no survey to help both professionals to take decisions on the target of application, elderly profile, empirical validation techniques, among others. Thus, the following question arises: how have mobile applications for elderly healthcare been addressed in the literature in the past years?
objectiveTo identify the state of the art in the literature concerned with the development of mobile applications for elderly healthcare, considering healthcare and software Engineering viewpoints.
methodWe performed a systematic mapping conducted by health and software engineering researchers to provide an interdisciplinary investigation of the papers that address mobile applications for elderly healthcare, summarizing the data collected under the following classification: target of application, older adult profile, spatial-temporal distribution, techniques for empirical validation and type of software engineering research.
resultsWe found a total of 2533 papers and, after applying our eligibility criteria, we got 149. We observed aspects related to the digital health initiative type, using the classification proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO), the elderly profile prioritized by the application, the spatial-temporal distribution of the studies, the empirical validation type, and the research contribution of each analyzed paper to the software engineering area.
conclusionsRegarding the WHO classification, we noticed that two categories were more frequently found, Clients and Data Services, and that none of the mobile apps were classified in the Health System Manager category. The data extraction result also reveals that most of the applications found in the literature focused on the independent elderly. Moreover, we observed that most of the studies were proposals of solutions for elderly health and the validation process of these solutions generally consisted of controlled experiments and usability evaluations. At last, the research focused on mobile applications for elderly healthcare has been performed mostly by developed countries.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.