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Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials

BACKGROUND: Social robots that can communicate and interact with people offer exciting opportunities for improved health care access and outcomes. However, evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on health or well-being outcomes has not yet been clearly synthesized across all health domain...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Robinson, Nicole Lee, Cottier, Timothy Vaughan, Kavanagh, David John
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: JMIR Publications 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6533873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31094357
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/13203
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author Robinson, Nicole Lee
Cottier, Timothy Vaughan
Kavanagh, David John
author_facet Robinson, Nicole Lee
Cottier, Timothy Vaughan
Kavanagh, David John
author_sort Robinson, Nicole Lee
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Social robots that can communicate and interact with people offer exciting opportunities for improved health care access and outcomes. However, evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on health or well-being outcomes has not yet been clearly synthesized across all health domains where social robots have been tested. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to undertake a systematic review examining current evidence from RCTs on the effects of psychosocial interventions by social robots on health or well-being. METHODS: Medline, PsycInfo, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Engineering Village searches across all years in the English language were conducted and supplemented by forward and backward searches. The included papers reported RCTs that assessed changes in health or well-being from interactions with a social robot across at least 2 measurement occasions. RESULTS: Out of 408 extracted records, 27 trials met the inclusion criteria: 6 in child health or well-being, 9 in children with autism spectrum disorder, and 12 with older adults. No trials on adolescents, young adults, or other problem areas were identified, and no studies had interventions where robots spontaneously modified verbal responses based on speech by participants. Most trials were small (total N=5 to 415; median=34), only 6 (22%) reported any follow-up outcomes (2 to 12 weeks; median=3.5) and a single-blind assessment was reported in 8 (31%). More recent trials tended to have greater methodological quality. All papers reported some positive outcomes from robotic interventions, although most trials had some measures that showed no difference or favored alternate treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Controlled research on social robots is at an early stage, as is the current range of their applications to health care. Research on social robot interventions in clinical and health settings needs to transition from exploratory investigations to include large-scale controlled trials with sophisticated methodology, to increase confidence in their efficacy.
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spelling pubmed-65338732019-06-07 Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials Robinson, Nicole Lee Cottier, Timothy Vaughan Kavanagh, David John J Med Internet Res Review BACKGROUND: Social robots that can communicate and interact with people offer exciting opportunities for improved health care access and outcomes. However, evidence from randomized controlled trials (RCTs) on health or well-being outcomes has not yet been clearly synthesized across all health domains where social robots have been tested. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to undertake a systematic review examining current evidence from RCTs on the effects of psychosocial interventions by social robots on health or well-being. METHODS: Medline, PsycInfo, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Engineering Village searches across all years in the English language were conducted and supplemented by forward and backward searches. The included papers reported RCTs that assessed changes in health or well-being from interactions with a social robot across at least 2 measurement occasions. RESULTS: Out of 408 extracted records, 27 trials met the inclusion criteria: 6 in child health or well-being, 9 in children with autism spectrum disorder, and 12 with older adults. No trials on adolescents, young adults, or other problem areas were identified, and no studies had interventions where robots spontaneously modified verbal responses based on speech by participants. Most trials were small (total N=5 to 415; median=34), only 6 (22%) reported any follow-up outcomes (2 to 12 weeks; median=3.5) and a single-blind assessment was reported in 8 (31%). More recent trials tended to have greater methodological quality. All papers reported some positive outcomes from robotic interventions, although most trials had some measures that showed no difference or favored alternate treatments. CONCLUSIONS: Controlled research on social robots is at an early stage, as is the current range of their applications to health care. Research on social robot interventions in clinical and health settings needs to transition from exploratory investigations to include large-scale controlled trials with sophisticated methodology, to increase confidence in their efficacy. JMIR Publications 2019-05-10 /pmc/articles/PMC6533873/ /pubmed/31094357 http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/13203 Text en ©Nicole Lee Robinson, Timothy Vaughan Cottier, David John Kavanagh. Originally published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research (http://www.jmir.org), 10.05.2019. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work, first published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, is properly cited. The complete bibliographic information, a link to the original publication on http://www.jmir.org/, as well as this copyright and license information must be included.
spellingShingle Review
Robinson, Nicole Lee
Cottier, Timothy Vaughan
Kavanagh, David John
Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title_full Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title_fullStr Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title_full_unstemmed Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title_short Psychosocial Health Interventions by Social Robots: Systematic Review of Randomized Controlled Trials
title_sort psychosocial health interventions by social robots: systematic review of randomized controlled trials
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6533873/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31094357
http://dx.doi.org/10.2196/13203
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