A review evaluating the design and standardisation of rollators and smart-walkers to improve future products.

Abstract

Four-wheeled walkers are widely used mobility aids for older adults. With the emergence of commercial smart-walkers, flaws in the design of rollators may carry over to the design of these emerging smart-walkers, necessitating a review of their design and standardisation. This review aims to evaluate how health, design, regulatory, research, and user factors intersect in the development and implementation of rollators and smart-walkers. It seeks to identify gaps in current standards, literature, and commercial products, with the goal of informing more user context-sensitive design and implementation approaches. The findings highlight limitations in current standardisation, regulatory and risk management frameworks for emerging commercial smart-walkers for personal and home use, and significant scope for improving rollator design to better reflect diverse user contexts, including device functionality, usability, and education. Additionally, the findings show that rollators and smart-walkers must evolve to adopt an inclusive design approach that prioritises ergonomic considerations, usability, safety, and the user's contextual relevance. This review underscores the importance of collaboration among health professionals, regulators, researchers, designers, and users to enhance rollator efficacy, usability, and safety. Future efforts in rollator and smart-walker design should incorporate structured feedback mechanisms and standardised evaluation tools to assess how users interact with devices and documentation. By addressing these factors, this review offers insights to guide the future design and implementation of rollators and smart-walkers, ensuring they better meet the needs, preferences and contexts of diverse users in personal and home settings.