Review of Applications and User Perceptions of Smart Home Technology for Health and Environmental Monitoring

Smart home technology has evolved to enhance quality of life, particularly through health and environmental monitoring applications. This review analyzed 159 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2021 to explore wearable and nonwearable device applications—including fall detection, ADL tracking, energy consumption, and indoor air quality monitoring—and identified user perceptions around usefulness, ease of use, and privacy. Findings revealed strong user interest in the potential benefits (e.g., safety, remote monitoring), but also recurring concerns about discomfort, maintenance, data sharing, and behavioral disruption. To increase adoption, the authors recommend combining wearable and nonwearable devices for greater accuracy and comfort, providing user training to reduce complexity, and enforcing policies and encryption to ensure data privacy.

Smart home technology has evolved to enhance quality of life, particularly through health and environmental monitoring applications. This review analyzed 159 peer-reviewed studies published between 2010 and 2021 to explore wearable and nonwearable device applications—including fall detection, ADL tracking, energy consumption, and indoor air quality monitoring—and identified user perceptions around usefulness, ease of use, and privacy. Findings revealed strong user interest in the potential benefits (e.g., safety, remote monitoring), but also recurring concerns about discomfort, maintenance, data sharing, and behavioral disruption. To increase adoption, the authors recommend combining wearable and nonwearable devices for greater accuracy and comfort, providing user training to reduce complexity, and enforcing policies and encryption to ensure data privacy.