Bridging Technology and Healthcare: A Bibliometric Review of Assistive Technologies in Hospital Environments

Today, healthcare systems face many challenges due to the increasing number of elderly people and the complex needs of patients with multiple diseases. Previous research has shown that assistive technologies (ATs), like wearable devices, mobile health (mHealth) apps, and smart monitoring systems, can help improve patient care and make healthcare services more efficient. However, many of these studies do not focus so much on hospitals and do not clearly show the effects on clinical outcomes. In this study, the authors conducted a bibliometric analysis using the Scopus database to determine how much research has been carried out on assistive technologies in hospitals, especially for patient profiling and treatment. The authors chose articles from the last 20 years using specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, and VOSviewer software (version 1.6.20) was used to study keywords, co-authorship, and citation networks to find research trends and missing areas. The results show that even if assistive technologies are growing fast, there are not many studies that focus on hospitals or on important outcomes like quality of care and treatment results. Most of the research is in computer science and engineering, and many keywords for hospital use are not common. This study discusses how assistive technologies can help change healthcare and also shows the current problems, like system integration, data privacy, cost, and whether users accept the technologies. The authors suggest that future research must look at personal solutions, international standards, and better cooperation between doctors, engineers, and policymakers.