Weekly activities using information and communication technologies (ICTs) are becoming increasingly common in care facilities for the elderly (e.g. nursing homes, retirement homes, day centers). Our aim here is to provide a review of the medical literature regarding the impact on health of these non-medically oriented interventions that use ICTs.

We performed a review of the literature based on data from Medline (PubMed), Google Scholar, Science Direct, and CAIRN. The research was done on articles in English or French, published prior to the 31st of December 2015. The research was based on the following Mesh headings (Medical Subject Headings): “video games” AND “aged” OR “elderly”. The research was restricted to articles written in English or in French that were published up to 01/11/2015.

12 studies were used for this non-systematic review. These studies were either controlled studies (N=5), uncontrolled studies (N=6), or reviews of the literature (N=1). Of the five controlled studies, three were randomized. The quality of the methodology limited the interpretation of the results and their extrapolation. Another limitation was the lack of a gold standard for measuring the various functions.

The hypothesis that use of ITCs has a favorable impact on health, even when used without a defined medical purpose, is not confirmed by the exploratory results of the studies examined here. This review hence confirms the existence of a medical research approach.