Virtual Reality for elderly – status quo and perspectives

Abstract

The last decade has witnessed the exponential growth of Virtual Reality (VR) as an affordable, powerful, and disruptive technology in a variety of fields, among which, notably, are healthcare and well-being. Particularly for the elderly people, VR has already been demonstrated, by a plethora of experiments and studies, as extremely effective in supporting a multitude of therapeutical interventions, from neuromotor and cognitive recovery and maintenance to mental health and wellbeing and socialisation. However, due to the novelty of the technology, the scientific and industry communities are missing both an overarching perspective covering all these intervention areas, as well as a common understanding of the results, challenges, limitations, possibilities, specificity, best practices, design approaches, and integration with traditional therapies, for each area. This hinders the development of commercial-level solutions and widespread adoption in clinical guidelines. This paper aims to cover these gaps, by identifying and analysing five of the most relevant VR intervention areas for elderlies, providing an overview and examples, for each area, and concluding with cross-area perspectives and pinpoints of the most needed research topics, to support the widespread adoption of VR-based interventions for elderly healthcare and wellbeing.

Keywords

• virtual reality
• elderly people
• neuromotor rehabilitation
• cognitive rehabilitation