P2‐012: EFFECT OF SOCIALLY ASSISTIVE ROBOT INTERVENTION ON PEOPLE WITH DEMENTIA: A META‐ANALYSIS

Abstract

Dementia is the 9th most burdensome illness globally. It has increased the demand for the care of the elderly. To decrease the care demand and burden for people with dementia (PWD), technology such as the development of robots is gaining interest. The objective to this study was to perform a meta-analysis to identify the effect of interventions with socially assistive robots (SARs) on behavioral psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and negative mood of PWD. A systematic search for trials was conducted from July to September 2017 across bibliographic databases. Assessment of the risk of bias in 8 screened studies was performed, and a meta-analysis was conducted to estimate the overall effect size of the intervention. Under a fixed effects model, Cohen's d effect size, which presented the overall effect size of the intervention with standardized mean differences (SMDs) and 95% confidence intervals was calculated. Under a fixed effects model (Q = 4.723, P = 0.580), overall mean effect size for BPSD among 7 results from 6 studies was −0.357 (95% CI: −0.522 - −0.192, Z = −4.246, P < 0.001), indicating that BPSD was significantly decreased in the robot intervention group compared to that in the control group. Overall mean effect size for negative mood such as depression and sadness in 6 studies was −0.324 (95% CI: −0.505 - −0.143, Z = −3.503, P < 0.001), indicating that negative mood was significantly decreased in the robot intervention group compared to that in the control group. Therefore, robot intervention was found to be effective in decreasing BPSD and negative mood for PWD. Results of this study will contribute to the acceleration of ongoing development of SARs to reduce the gap between care demand and supply.