Ambient Assisted Living – A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

Introduction: Ambient Assisted Living technologies provide assistance and support to people with some disabilities, such as the elderly and in cases of dementia. They offer greater control and reduction of predicted economic costs as life expectancy and the incidence of dementias tend to increase. The AAL is a growing area of research and there is a need to assess the existent publications, research trends, and characteristics in this field, providing an overview of the development of AAL systems-related research. Therefore, the aim of this study is to analyze and understand the research trends and characteristics in the AAL field by means of a bibliometric analysis. Methods: We performed a document search in Scopus with a query designed to reflect the AAL field of study, from inception up to the end of 2018. Subsequently we made several analyses to discover publication trends and patterns in this research area. Results: There are a total of 14645 authors in the AAL field, which corresponds to a mean of 1.84 authors per document. The most productive country was Spain with 895 documents, followed by United Kingdom and Germany with 723 and 718 respectively. Conclusion: This paper provides an overall picture of the state of the research regarding the field of ambient assisted living, identifies the most active authors and highlight relations between areas of research. It shades light on possible collaborations with research groups and across countries.