the role of technology in health care of aging people with cognitive disorder: a narrative review

Cognitive function plays an important role in everyone’s life and the prevalence of cognitive impairment increases with age. according to the statistics, this disease is so common in iran and the worldwide. nowadays, technology has helped people with cognitive impairment and their careers in different aspects. this study aimed to review the role of technology in health care status of aging people with cognitive disorder. we searched google scholar, medline, science direct, scopus, proques, ovid, iranmedex, sid and magiran. we searched for terms such as elderly, aging, technology, cognitive impairment, care giver, virtual, alzheimer, dementia, telecare, sensor, information and communication, memory training, assistive device ,smart phone, web base education and web based learning. 1977 related articles from the period of 2005- 2015 were found, we checked the reference lists of all papers of included studies for further potentially eligible studies. eventually 17 relevant papers were studied. reviewing the obtained articles, showed the positive role of technology in assessing cognitive impairment in early-stages, helping caregivers, improving the quality of health care and memory enhancement in people with alzheimer's disease. it is suggested to provide support services for the elderly with improving infrastructures, such as a careful program planning for responsible organizations, setting the necessary funds, development of interdisciplinary communication, appropriate culture building practices and providing appropriate training in the community and developing communication systems in the country.