Social Robot Interventions for Child Healthcare: A Systematic Review of the Literature

We present a systematic review of the literature on social robot interventions for child healthcare. The primary features and outcomes of studies using social robots are illustrated, to advance our comprehension towards the development of useful and effective social robot-based health interventions for the children. We conducted a literature search in the bibliographic databases of PubMed and Scopus in order to find studies incorporating social robot interventions targeting child healthcare. The studies were synthesized according to the intervention's target, main robot features, study design, target age of children, number of participants, follow-up duration, and primary outcomes. Our review reveals that most studies involved only a single session of interactions with the robot, and conducted with a limited number of participants. The interventions targeted alleviation of distress in children with cancer, exercise coaching, improvement of playfulness in children with intellectual disabilities, improvement of mental health, reduction of pain and distress in pediatric inpatient or outpatient settings, e.g., during needle insertions or vaccination, improvement of nutritional knowledge, and achievement of instant therapeutic or education goals in children with physical disabilities. The majority of the studies (85%) reported significant outcomes in technology acceptance, feasibility, enjoyment, engagement, achievement of therapeutic/education goals, pain, and mental health outcomes. Significant outcomes in the mental state of children, suggest that social robots should be considered in the design of psychological interventions for children. More rigorous research in the area of evaluation of social robot interventions for child healthcare is warranted.