# Conversational Agents for Older Adults' Health: A Systematic Literature Review

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23153 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.23153/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 9 of its 117 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 29 Mar 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 9 of 9)

- [UX Research on Conversational Human-AI Interaction: A Literature Review of the ACM Digital Library](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.09895/) (2022)
- [On Evaluating and Comparing Open Domain Dialog Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.03625/) (2018)
- [Towards Designing a ChatGPT Conversational Companion for Elderly People](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2304.09866/) (2023)
- [Understanding Barriers and Design Opportunities to Improve Healthcare and QOL for Older Adults through Voice Assistants](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2111.03756/) (2021)
- [Exploring the Design of Generative AI in Supporting Music-based Reminiscence for Older Adults](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.01413/) (2024)
- [Delivering Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Using A Conversational SocialRobot](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.06670/) (2019)
- [TalkTive: A Conversational Agent Using Backchannels to Engage Older Adults in Neurocognitive Disorders Screening](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.08216/) (2022)
- [Older Adults and Voice Interaction: A Pilot Study with Google Home](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1903.07195/) (2019)
- [Investigating Older Adults' Attitudes towards Crisis Informatics Tools: Opportunities for Enhancing Community Resilience during Disasters](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.10927/) (2022)

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Agentic Cognitive Profiling: Realigning Automated Alzheimer's Disease Detection with Clinical Construct Validity](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.17392/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

There has been vast literature that studies Conversational Agents (CAs) in facilitating older adults' health. The vast and diverse studies warrants a comprehensive review that concludes the main findings and proposes research directions for future studies, while few literature review did it from human-computer interaction (HCI) perspective. In this study, we present a survey of existing studies on CAs for older adults' health. Through a systematic review of 72 papers, this work reviewed previously studied older adults' characteristics and analyzed participants' experiences and expectations of CAs for health. We found that (1) Past research has an increasing interest on chatbots and voice assistants and applied CA as multiple roles in older adults' health. (2) Older adults mainly showed low acceptance CAs for health due to various reasons, such as unstable effects, harm to independence, and privacy concerns. (3) Older adults expect CAs to be able to support multiple functions, to communicate using natural language, to be personalized, and to allow users full control. We also discuss the implications based on the findings.