A Literature Review of China’s Smart Elderly Care Industry

Abstract

With the aging population in China, the issue of elderly care has gradually become a topic of concern in today’s society. Traditional elderly care models can no longer meet the needs of contemporary elderly people. Therefore, smart elderly care, as a new type of elderly care model formed by the development of information technology, can provide efficient, convenient, and personalized services for the elderly, with broad market prospects and development space. Therefore, the smart elderly care industry is also receiving increasing attention from researchers, and the number of related papers is also increasing year by year. This article uses China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) as the database source and conducts a search under the theme of “smart elderly care industry” in the search box. A visual analysis is conducted on 525 articles found from 2013 to 2024. It is found that research on the smart elderly care industry in China began in 2013, and the annual circulation of related papers has been on the rise since 2019. This paper reviews the literature on three research directions including problems and strategies of the smart elderly care industry, the elderly care industry under Internet plus and artificial intelligence, and related policies of the smart elderly care industry. Through analysis, it finds that some researchers are committed to studying some problems of the smart elderly care industry, and put forward some suggestions, such as establishing a unified smart elderly care service standard and finding an appropriate industrial integration path based on the needs of the elderly. Some researchers believe that the Internet and artificial intelligence will bring opportunities to the elderly care industry, help to accurately position the market, and meet the needs of the elderly. Some policy researchers have also found that the Chinese government is increasingly valuing the smart elderly care industry. Hence, by summarizing and evaluating the current situation, development, and related policies of the smart elderly care industry, this study hopes to provide some ideas and directions for researchers in the research of the smart elderly care industry.