Global Research Trends on Smart Homes for Older Adults: Bibliometric and Scientometric Analyses

A growing aging population across the world signifies the importance of smart homes equipped with appropriate technology for the safety and health of older adults. Well-designed smart homes can increase the desire of older adults’ aging-in-place and bring economic benefits to the country by reducing budgets for care providers. To obtain a structural overview and provide significant insights into the characteristics of smart homes for older adults, this study conducted bibliometric and scientometric analyses. We used the Web of Science Core Collection database, searching for keywords “smart home*”, “home automation”, or “domotics” with terms related to older adults, resulting in a total of 1408 documents. VOSviewer software was used to map and visualize the documents. The results showed that research on smart homes for older adults began appearing from 1997 and increased steadily, peaking from 2015. The main research areas were technical engineering fields, such as computer science and engineering, telecommunications with minimal research in humanities, social sciences, and design, indicating the necessity to expand research toward a human-centered perspective, age-friendly technology, and convergence study.