When Does a Home Become a Place of Care? How Will the Care Industries Around the Home Be Reshaped? The Next Shape of the Home-Centered Care Supply Chain(Part 5)

Author's Note

This is the final installment of the five-part series “When Does a Home Become a Place of Care?” The series has traced how care moved from being primarily a family responsibility into the market, and how products, industries, labor, and technology have increasingly become organized around the homes of older adults. In doing so, it has examined how the global longevity economy—where healthcare, housing, daily living, culture, and technology intersect—has evolved, and how the care supply chain may be reshaped in the years ahead.

The Series

Part 1. Buying Care — When Care Leaves the Family and Enters the Market

Part 2. Care Products Coming Home — What Do People Buy for Care at Home?

Part 3. Care Industries Moving Toward the Home — Who Is Knocking on the Older Adult’s Door?

Part 4. Care Work Coming Home — Who Will Provide Care, Where Will They Come From, and Under What Conditions?

Part 5. How Will the Care Industries Around the Home Be Reshaped? — The Next Shape of the Home-Centered Care Supply Chain

1. Where Are the Industries Moving Toward the Home Beginning to Converge?

This series has not treated care as a problem belonging to one national system or one particular industry. Instead, it has followed a broader movement visible across rapidly aging societies: care that families once absorbed is entering the market, and different products, services, industries, and forms of labor are moving toward the homes of older adults. Institutions, cultures, and family roles differ from country to country, but a similar shift is visible in the desire of people with care needs to remain in their own homes and communities for as long as possible.

Part 1 examined the conditions under which care once carried by families becomes a market product or service. Part 2 showed that what people buy at home extends well beyond traditional services such as home care or personal assistance. Meals, mobility, safety, daily-living support, housing, and technology can all become care products when they help sustain parts of everyday life that a person can no longer maintain alone. What people ultimately buy is often less a product name than the hands, eyes, time, and space needed to keep daily life going.

Part 3 shifted the perspective from products to suppliers. Alongside the Core Care Industry, where human labor directly provides care, Downstream Industries such as housing, food, retail, and mobility were also moving toward the home, while Upstream Industries such as assistive devices, robotics, platforms, and AI were moving closer to actual care delivery. Existing industry boundaries did not remain intact. Daily-living services added care functions, and technology companies began to participate in care operations. Part 4 then showed that the labor required to run this wider supply chain could no longer be explained only by frontline service workers. Coordination roles and technology development and validation roles were becoming increasingly important as well.

That brings us to the final question. If these supply chains are already moving toward the home, how much further might they evolve?

Part 5 approaches the question through the same three-part framework used in Part 3: the Core Care Industry, Downstream Industries, and Upstream Industries. In the Core Care Industry, we examine how home-based healthcare is bringing healthcare and care together inside the home, and how supply chains once focused mainly on direct service provision are expanding toward integration and coordination. In Downstream Industries, we look at how housing, lifestyle services, local infrastructure for everyday living, culture, and community are taking on functions that help older people sustain their lives. In Upstream Industries, we ask how far care robots and AI are moving beyond supplying equipment and software to share parts of human action, observation, emotional support, judgment, and operations.

The purpose is not to assemble a catalogue of cases. The more important questions are how each industry’s existing supply chain was organized, how policy, institutions, and market conditions are changing, and how new suppliers are entering as a result. Cases where change is already visible help us see how far the movement has progressed—and what may be changing between today’s care supply chain and the next one.

The first four parts traced how the global care market has been shifting. It is now time to ask how far that movement has come—and what the next home-centered care supply chain may begin to look like.

2. How Far Will the Core Care Industry Expand?

Part 3 divided the care supply chain into the Core Care Industry, Downstream Industries, and Upstream Industries. The Core Care Industry referred to service industries in which human labor directly supports the daily life of a person with care needs. Home care, household assistance, and daily-living support are obvious examples. This was not intended as an official industrial classification, but as an analytical device for tracing how the boundaries around care are shifting.

Even the Core Care Industry no longer stops at home care. As home-based healthcare, nursing, rehabilitation, and medication management move into the home, healthcare and care are drawing closer together. The ability to connect several professional services around a single person’s life is becoming increasingly important. The significance of the Ansan Health and Welfare Social Cooperative, discussed earlier, was not simply the number of services it offered, but the delivery structure that could connect healthcare, care, rehabilitation, medication management, and housing around one person’s home and everyday life.

What might change next? Two movements are especially important. The first is the expansion of home-based healthcare, which is bringing healthcare and care into the same supply chain. The second is the movement of lifestyle concierge services into health and care.

Home-Based Healthcare and Care Are Beginning to Meet in the Same Supply Chain

Home-based healthcare is not itself new. What is changing is that healthcare delivered at home is no longer limited to occasional home visits. In some systems, it is becoming an established mode of delivering healthcare outside the hospital.

The United Kingdom’s Virtual Ward model illustrates this direction. NHS Virtual Wards, also described as Hospital at Home, allow patients who would otherwise need hospital-level care to receive acute treatment and monitoring in their own homes. Clinicians may visit in person or review patients by video; testing and medication can also be delivered at home. Apps, wearables, and medical devices are used to monitor patients remotely. The NHS has continued to embed Virtual Wards within the wider health system and expand their use.

The significance of this model is not simply that medical treatment moves from the hospital to the home. It also raises the question of where scarce beds and clinical resources should be used. The NHS presents Virtual Wards as a way to reduce avoidable admissions and allow appropriate patients to leave hospital sooner. Some regional evaluations have also reported reductions in hospital use and financial benefits. This does not mean that every form of home-based healthcare is cheaper than hospital care. It does, however, show a policy effort to redistribute resources away from an exclusively hospital-centered, high-cost delivery structure toward one that also includes homes and communities.

Korea is also broadening the supply base for home-based healthcare. Long-Term Care Home Medical Centers use teams of physicians, nurses, and social workers to visit recipients of Long-Term Care Insurance in their homes, provide medical care, and connect them to needed community care services. Korea’s integrated community care framework likewise provides institutional support for connecting healthcare, long-term care, and other forms of care within local communities.

One point worth watching in Korea is the range of providers. Home-based healthcare is not limited to conventional medical clinics. The Long-Term Care Home Medical Center program also includes separate guidance for Korean medicine clinics. As home-based healthcare expands, medical home visits, Korean medicine home care, nursing, and rehabilitation may increasingly enter the same homes where long-term care and daily-living support are already being delivered.

The Ansan Health and Welfare Social Cooperative shows what such convergence can look like at the local level. In Ansan, clinics, home nursing, home-based healthcare, long-term care, and personal assistance for people with disabilities are linked. Physicians, nurses, social workers, and rehabilitation professionals visit people at home. Pharmacists participate in medication management, while home modification and smart health support can also be connected when needed. The reason this case mattered earlier was not that one organization happened to possess many services. The important point was the emergence of a delivery structure capable of connecting healthcare, care, rehabilitation, medication management, and housing around a person’s home and life.

Cera in the United Kingdom illustrates a different route by which home-based healthcare and care are converging. Alongside home care, Cera provides nurse-led Complex Care for people with more intensive health needs at home. Nurses train and supervise frontline care workers, while services are organized with other professionals. Support for PEG feeding, oxygen, and stoma care—needs requiring more medical management than ordinary daily-living assistance—has entered the home-care setting.

Ansan and Cera are not the same kind of organization. Ansan stands out for linking several local providers across healthcare and care, whereas Cera shows an existing home-care company expanding into nursing and complex health management. The point here is not to rank one model as more advanced than the other.

Taken together, however, the cases show a common shift. When healthcare remained largely inside hospitals, healthcare and care could more easily operate as separate supply chains. Once both enter the same person’s home, the relationship changes. Changes observed by clinicians may need to be communicated to nurses and care workers. Changes noticed during everyday care visits may need to be fed back into healthcare. Nursing, rehabilitation, medication management, and daily-living support must increasingly connect within the same life.

The expansion of home-based healthcare is therefore more than simply adding another medical service alongside the care market. As healthcare moves into the home, it forms new relationships with care services already there, creating pressure to reconnect the supply chains of healthcare, nursing, rehabilitation, long-term care, and daily-living support.

The role of the Core Care Industry may change as a result. Sending people into the home to provide direct care remains essential. But alongside that function, care providers may increasingly need to connect healthcare and care information and coordinate specialized services as a person’s condition changes.

How Might Lifestyle Concierge Services Expand Into Care?

Concierge services did not originate in the care industry. Hotels and premium residential developments have long used concierges to respond to requests for meals, transportation, reservations, cleaning, and access to facilities. Their basic function is to receive multiple requests in one place and connect the customer with the appropriate provider.

As this model moves into senior housing, however, the range of connected services is changing. Health management, medical services, wellness, culture, and community are being added to everyday convenience. The point is not to redefine concierge services as part of the Core Care Industry. Rather, as core care services extend further into the home, the everyday touchpoints that first receive a person’s needs—and the coordination functions that connect multiple providers—can move closer to the core care supply chain.

THE CLASSIC 500 in Korea offers a useful example. It provides hotel-style services such as housekeeping, valet service, and personal concierge assistance. At the same time, it operates customized medical services involving advisors from Konkuk University Medical Center as well as physicians, nurses, physical therapists, and exercise specialists. Abnormal findings after health screening can be connected to hospital outpatient care. Health management, exercise and nutrition, culture, and community programs are also offered within the same residential setting.

Seen on its own, this may look like a premium senior-residence service model. More recently, however, there have been efforts to move parts of that operating model beyond dedicated senior housing. In discussions between THE CLASSIC 500 and a construction company about combining senior life-care services with community facilities in ordinary apartment developments, the proposed package includes health management, fall and cognitive-decline prevention, wellness covering sleep, nutrition, and exercise, cultural and community programs, private concierge services, and life management.

Seen through the supply chain, this points to a possibility beyond conventional senior housing. Traditionally, when a person developed care needs, the person or family searched for a care provider and applied for a service. Housing was primarily the place where that service was received. But once a concierge that already manages daily-life services begins to connect health and care as well, the place where someone lives can itself become a point of access to services.

A resident with a daily-life need may first contact the concierge, which can then connect daily-living support, health management, medical services, cultural activities, or community programs. Even if one company does not directly produce every service, the operator that maintains continuous contact with residents can function as a gateway through which multiple providers enter the resident’s life.

There has been a similar experiment in the digital environment. Amazon’s Alexa Together was a monthly subscription service designed to help older adults live independently at home while receiving support from family members. Family members could use the Alexa app to view activity information and receive alerts when no activity was detected for a period. The service included access to 24-hour emergency support and could connect with fall-detection devices. Family members could also remotely set schedules, reminders, and contacts.

Alexa Together is no longer offered. Amazon did not provide a detailed public explanation for its closure, while some emergency-support functions continued through Alexa Emergency Assist. It would therefore be wrong to present Alexa Together as a proven model of a successful care platform.

Its supply-chain significance is different. A large digital platform already present in many households experimented with bundling well-being checks, family connection, emergency support, and remote assistance into a separate product for older adults.

THE CLASSIC 500 and Alexa Together are very different services. One is a human-centered residential service model in a physical setting; the other connected older adults and family members through a digital lifestyle platform. Yet from a care supply-chain perspective, they reveal a similar shift: care does not have to begin only when a person goes out and searches for a provider. A space or platform already embedded in everyday life can become a new entry point for care services.

This movement may change again as AI develops. After ending Alexa Together, Amazon shifted the next generation of Alexa toward Alexa+, built around generative AI. Alexa+ is designed to move beyond simply providing information toward more agentic functions, such as making reservations or purchases and controlling connected devices on the user’s behalf. This does not mean that Alexa+ currently provides care services. It does suggest, however, how a lifestyle platform that can understand requests and take action across external services could eventually intersect with the kinds of care-connection functions that Alexa Together once explored.

Not every lifestyle concierge will become a care business. Nor is it likely that a premium senior-residence model such as THE CLASSIC 500 can simply be transplanted into the mainstream housing market. The closure of Alexa Together also shows that bundling care functions into a lifestyle platform does not automatically create a sustainable business.

Even so, the supply-chain movement is worth watching. Concierges designed for convenience are beginning to connect health and healthcare. Service models developed in dedicated senior housing are being considered for community spaces in ordinary apartment developments. Digital lifestyle platforms have experimented with bundling family connection, well-being checks, and emergency support into care-related offerings.

If this continues, the firms that matter most in the care supply chain may not be only those that directly produce services. Businesses that maintain everyday contact with older adults—and have the space or platform through which a need is first expressed—may occupy increasingly important positions.

Home-based healthcare and lifestyle concierge services began in very different places. Home-based healthcare represents healthcare moving into the home and meeting existing care services there. Lifestyle concierge services are not themselves the Core Care Industry; they represent housing and lifestyle services moving closer to health and care as everyday touchpoints. Taken together, these movements suggest a clearer role for the core care supply chain. Direct care workers and providers remain central, but as healthcare enters the home, healthcare and care must be connected; as lifestyle services move closer to health and care, spaces and platforms that older adults already use become new entry points. Rather than stretching the definition of the Core Care Industry too far, it is more accurate to say that the functions of connection and coordination are growing around it.

3. How Far Will Downstream Industries Move Into Care?

Part 3 examined industries downstream from the Core Care Industry. These were not industries originally created for care. They included housing, food, retail, mobility, and safety—industries already in direct contact with the everyday lives of older adults. They moved into the care supply chain by using assets they already possessed: space, customer touchpoints, logistics networks, and existing services, to which care functions could be added. Whereas the Core Care Industry sends people into the home to provide direct care, Downstream Industries enter by adding care functions to products and services that older adults were already using.

Housing and mobile-retail cases had already shown that this movement was underway. Senior housing was becoming more than a physically accessible place to live; it was becoming a setting into which multiple care services could be integrated. Existing distribution networks, meanwhile, were adding well-being checks to the delivery of goods. Assets that once belonged to other industries were becoming new touchpoints in the care supply chain.

How far might this movement extend? Four directions are especially visible: housing itself becoming easier to use as a platform for care; lifestyle services expanding into the everyday support once provided by families; local infrastructure in rural areas taking on care functions; and culture and leisure entering the care supply chain by supporting emotional well-being, relationships, and community.

How Far Can Housing Become a Hub in the Care Supply Chain?

Housing for older people has existed for a long time. The more recent change in the housing industry, however, is not only the design of buildings that are easier for older residents to use. More important is the growing proximity between supplying a home and supplying the daily-living support and care needed to remain there.

Extra Care Housing in the United Kingdom is a well-known example. It combines housing and care so that residents can live independently in their own homes while receiving on-site support when needed. Instead of separating ordinary housing completely from care facilities, the model begins with independent living and creates a supply structure into which care can be added as needs emerge.

Housing 21 is a large nonprofit housing provider operating this model in England. It manages more than 24,000 homes across Retirement Living and Extra Care. In Extra Care, residents live in independent apartments or bungalows, receive support from on-site managers, and have access to care workers around the clock for planned and emergency care. Communal spaces and activities may include lounges, cafés or bistros, gardens, and hair salons.

The important point is not simply the number of properties. In Housing 21’s Extra Care model, the relationship through which someone owns or rents a home and the relationship through which that person receives care operate within the same living environment. Developing care needs does not necessarily require leaving a familiar living environment for a care home. If only one member of a couple needs care, the couple can continue living together while support is added for the person who needs it.

This changes the role of the housing provider. In a conventional housing supply chain, the provider develops and manages buildings while care is something residents procure separately after needs arise. In Extra Care, the physical design, on-site care workforce, emergency-response systems, common areas, and daily-living support are considered together from the beginning.

Housing therefore ceases to be merely the background against which care services are delivered. It can become a hub in the care supply chain—a place from which providers can continuously understand who lives there, what support is needed, and which services should be connected and when.

Not all senior housing will evolve in this direction. Housing systems, the scale of social housing, care financing, and the role of housing providers differ across countries. Yet Housing 21 shows one possibility: competitiveness in senior housing may depend not only on the physical quality of the building, but also on how continuously and flexibly the setting can support daily life and care.

This is why the home itself can be understood as a platform into which multiple care services enter. As housing moves deeper into the care supply chain, the next generation of care-enabled housing may go beyond providing “a home where care is possible” toward an operating structure that can continuously add, remove, and reconfigure services around the home.

How Can Lifestyle Services Replace Some of the Family’s Hands and Time?

Many of the tasks required to remain at home are not classified as healthcare or long-term care. Grocery shopping, tidying the house, going to the hospital with someone, taking a walk together, or simply staying nearby during long hours alone may not appear as formal care benefits. When family members live nearby, such activities may not look like separate services at all. Once families can no longer provide them continuously, however, even small tasks of daily life have to be supplied from outside.

This creates an opening not only for traditional care providers but also for lifestyle-service companies that already have a history of working inside people’s homes.

Duskin Life Care in Japan is one example. Duskin built recurring customer relationships in household cleaning, hygiene, and other home services. Life Care now supports older adults who want to remain in familiar homes through household assistance, physical support, accompaniment outside the home, monitoring and companionship, and dementia-related support. An important feature is that these are private-pay daily-living services provided outside Japan’s public Long-Term Care Insurance benefit system.

Operating outside insurance changes the boundaries of the service. Instead of dividing support according to a predetermined benefit package, users can combine multiple forms of assistance within the time they purchase. Duskin Life Care offers services that public long-term care alone may not easily cover, including accompaniment to outpatient visits or walks, extended monitoring and companionship, support for co-resident family members, and services at night or on holidays.

Hospital accompaniment makes the shift particularly clear. The service can extend beyond helping an older adult travel from home to the hospital. A worker may wait through the appointment, listen to the physician’s explanation, pick up medication, and accompany the person home. For someone preparing for discharge, support may include getting the home ready before return and helping the person re-establish everyday routines afterward.

To describe this simply as a new form of home care would miss part of the change. Duskin did not begin as a care provider. It began with household and lifestyle services already entering people’s homes, then widened the scope of support as older customers’ lives changed—from cleaning and housework to outings, medical accompaniment, monitoring, and physical assistance.

Part 2 argued that what people ultimately buy in the care market may be hands, eyes, time, and space. Duskin Life Care shows how a lifestyle-service company can turn some of the hands and time once supplied by families into a purchasable service.

This also changes how we think about entry into the care supply chain. A company does not necessarily have to begin by creating a new care institution. A lifestyle-service company already present in the home, familiar with the customer’s everyday life, and capable of providing recurring services may enter by adding care functions to its existing supply chain.

The boundary between daily-living support and professional care still matters. Lifestyle services cannot replace healthcare or all forms of skilled physical care. But if a significant share of the needs that arise in a long life remain outside formally defined care benefits, that gap may become an important market where lifestyle-service industries meet the care supply chain.

Where Markets Cannot Sustain Services, Everyday Infrastructure Can Become Care

The movement of Downstream Industries into care does not always take a corporate form.

In cities, if demand is large enough, several providers of meals, mobility, household services, healthcare, and care can coexist within the same area. Rural areas experiencing population decline face a different problem. When there are fewer customers and travel distances are longer, even basic services such as supermarkets, fuel stations, and deliveries may no longer be commercially sustainable.

Care cannot simply be preserved in isolation after the rest of everyday infrastructure disappears. A few hours of home care do not sustain life at home if a person cannot buy food, travel, or obtain the basic goods needed for daily living.

Kawakami Life in Kawakami Village, Nara Prefecture, Japan, began from precisely this problem. The village established the general incorporated association Kawakami Life to create a structure that would allow residents to continue living locally. The organization operates everyday services such as a mobile supermarket, cooperative-delivery support, and a fuel station. The village describes the initiative as a way to sustain local life through shopping support, well-being checks, employment, and local economic circulation.

The mobile supermarket is not simply a truck selling goods. Working with local retailers, it circulates through settlements across the village, selling food and daily necessities while staff speak with residents and observe how they are doing. Nurses and dental hygienists may accompany the vehicle to provide health consultations and support.

The industrial logic matters. In a depopulating area, private operators may be unable to generate enough revenue to sustain basic services at all. Kawakami Village created a separate organization to continue mobile retail and delivery, while broadening the purpose from sales toward well-being checks and welfare functions.

Here, the retail supply chain and care supply chain cannot easily be maintained as separate systems, so two functions ride along the same route. If someone must already travel through the village to deliver goods, that visit can also be used to check on residents. When residents gather around the mobile supermarket, shopping can create social contact; if a health problem is noticed, the person can be connected to a local clinic or other support system.

The point is not that a new care company is growing in rural Japan. It is nearly the opposite. In places where even basic lifestyle services cannot be sustained by one private company, keeping industries separated may itself become unrealistic. Retail, daily-living support, health and well-being checks, public support, and resident organizations may need to operate within one supply chain simply to keep everyday life possible.

The care supply chain of the longevity era therefore need not develop only through corporate models found in large cities. Where population density and market size differ, a locally organized care supply chain in which local government, community organizations, and existing private providers share roles may be a realistic model.

If Housing 21 shows how a fixed place—the home—can become a care hub, Kawakami Village shows how everyday infrastructure moving repeatedly through a community can become a care touchpoint.

How Can Cultural Services Enter the Care Supply Chain?

Remaining at home for a long life is not only a matter of performing activities of daily living independently. A person may be able to eat, take medication, and move safely, yet still face the separate challenge of meeting others, having conversations, and maintaining relationships with a community to which they belong.

These issues were long treated as matters of leisure, culture, or community participation rather than healthcare or care. More recently, however, growing evidence on the relationship between arts, culture, social activity, health, and well-being has led to efforts to connect cultural services with health and care supply chains.

Cultural social prescribing in the United Kingdom is one example. Social prescribing links people with community activities to improve health and well-being. In London, this approach has been extended into culture by connecting arts and cultural activities with health and care services and with voluntary and community organizations. The Greater London Authority supports programs and networks involving arts and cultural institutions, health and care services, and the local voluntary and community sector.

Culture does not replace treatment here. The point is to connect existing local cultural resources to problems such as social isolation, loneliness, emotional well-being, and social participation—areas that cannot always be addressed through medical treatment alone.

This changes the position of cultural institutions. They are no longer only suppliers of performances or arts programs to consumers. They can also become providers that the health and care system draws on when reconnecting people with community life.

China shows a different path. For many middle-aged and older Chinese adults, square dancing (guangchangwu) is both exercise and a major form of group cultural activity. People meet to learn and practice dances, form teams, and share public spaces. Research has found that community dance among older adults can go beyond exercise to support new social relationships, mutual support, volunteering, and participation in community life.

Tangdou (糖豆) is a commercial platform built on that everyday cultural practice. It grew around square-dance and exercise content and presents itself as a health-and-culture community where middle-aged and older users can learn, exercise, share their activities, interact with others, and participate in events.

There is no need to call Tangdou a care company. Its core product remains dance, exercise, and cultural content. Yet a supply-chain perspective reveals something else. Users do not merely consume videos. They connect with people who share their interests, participate together, and form communities in which they can remain active.

What matters in culture-based care, then, is not the label attached to a cultural service but the function it performs in an older person’s life. In the United Kingdom, health and care systems are building pathways that connect people with cultural and community activities. In China, a company that began by supplying cultural and exercise content has become a community touchpoint where middle-aged and older people can participate and interact.

The models are not the same. But both show what can enter the care supply chain once care is understood as more than direct physical assistance. If emotional support, human relationships, social participation, and a sense of belonging are also functions that sustain life in a longevity society, cultural services can intersect with the care supply chain as well.

There are clear limits. Cultural participation does not solve every problem of loneliness or mental health, nor can it replace professional healthcare or care. Tangdou was not built for care. That is precisely why it is meaningful as a Downstream Industry case: culture and community, once outside the care industry, can meet the front edge of the care supply chain by helping sustain relationships, emotional well-being, social participation, and connection.

Housing, lifestyle services, rural everyday infrastructure, and cultural services began in different industries. Housing 21 attaches care to a place where people can continue living. Duskin Life Care turns some of the family’s hands and time into lifestyle services. Kawakami Life combines infrastructure and community networks where the private market alone struggles to sustain daily life. Cultural social prescribing and Tangdou create routes through which emotional well-being, relationships, social participation, and community can be maintained.

There is no need to group all of them into one new industry. Their origins, revenue models, and institutional positions are different. But together they clarify how Downstream Industries enter the care supply chain: not only by creating new care services from scratch, but by adding care functions to space, customer touchpoints, lifestyle services, local networks, culture, and community that already exist.

Different industry boundaries are moving toward the homes of older adults. The cases now emerging extend beyond convenience inside the home to the larger questions of where someone will live, who will support everyday life, how life can be sustained locally, and with whom a person will remain connected.

For Downstream Industries to move into care does not mean that their industries simply become “care industries.” Rather, as people living longer need more functions to sustain life in their homes and communities, industries that already possess those functions begin to take responsibility for parts of the care supply chain.

4. Will Upstream Industries Remain Behind Care?

Part 3 defined Upstream Industries as those supplying the technologies, equipment, and systems that enable care services to function. Assistive devices, rehabilitation equipment, sensors, robotics, software, and platforms all belonged to this category. Again, this was an analytical distinction rather than a formal industrial classification, designed to trace where different industries are positioned within the care supply chain.

The upstream role was already changing. Some companies no longer stop at manufacturing assistive devices or delivering software. They analyze real care workflows and design functions that support service operations. Platforms, too, have moved beyond simple matching between users and care workers into recruitment, training, scheduling, records, and billing. Upstream Industries are beginning to move forward in the supply chain.

What might change next? Will Upstream Industries remain technology suppliers whose role is to help people and care organizations work better? Or will they begin to share parts of the actions, observation, emotional interaction, judgment, and operations that people have traditionally performed?

Two developments help us explore that possibility: care robots and care AI agents.

Which Parts of Human Care Will Care Robots Share?

Care robots often conjure a simple image: robots replacing care once provided by people. But the roles of robots already entering care settings are much less straightforward.

In Japan, even the policy framework for developing and deploying care technology has broadened. The Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry have long designated priority areas for the use of robotics in care and supported development and adoption. More recently, the framework has broadened under the label “Priority Areas for the Use of Care Technology,” covering not only transfer, mobility, toileting, and bathing assistance but also functional training, meals and nutrition, dementia-related daily-living support, and care support. The goal is not only to reduce the burden on care workers, but also to improve service quality and support older people’s independence.

The policy change is significant for more than the growing number of robot categories. Where the initial focus was often on physical assistance—lifting or moving a person—the field is beginning to view training, daily-living support, observation, and communication as potential roles for technology as well.

One starting point remains the robot that helps the human body. Hug, developed by the Japanese industrial equipment and robotics company FUJI, is a transfer-support robot that assists users in standing and moving between a bed and wheelchair, toilet, or shower chair. The user leans into the machine, which helps the person stand and remain upright while moving, reducing the need for a care worker to physically lift the person. FUJI has developed models for home care as well as institutional use.

The home model is significant for the supply chain. Institutions can standardize space, movement patterns, and staffing to some degree. Homes cannot. Room sizes, bed positions, and bathroom layouts differ, and users or family members may operate devices directly. A care-robot supply chain must therefore do more than manufacture and deliver a product. It must assess whether the device fits a particular home and user, train people to use it safely, and provide maintenance that allows it to remain usable over time.

Hug does not replace “care” as a whole. It shares a particular movement within the transfer process: lifting the body and maintaining a standing position. Dressing the person, observing changes in condition, and reassuring someone who is anxious remain human tasks. The change represented by physically assistive robots is therefore less a choice between humans and robots than a question of how one care action can be divided between a person and a machine.

The role of care robots does not end with physical lifting. Hyodol in Korea illustrates another direction. Hyodol combines conversational AI with Home IoT in a socially assistive care robot that interacts with users, reminds them about medication and daily routines, detects movement, and collects lifelog data. The company operates an AI Care Platform that analyzes those data to support personalized care services.

The important point is not the robot’s appearance or conversation technology by itself. Home care includes long periods when no care worker is present. A home care worker or nurse may visit, but does not remain in the home all day. Family members also cannot always be there. A conversational care robot can remain in the living environment during those hours.

Historically, the hours when no person was present were largely a gap in the care supply chain. A problem might be discovered at the next visit, or the user had to alert family or a provider directly. When conversational AI, sensors, and communications are combined, the system can speak with the person, provide medication or schedule reminders, detect changes in daily life, and relay information to people when necessary.

This does not mean that conversational AI robots should be understood as replacing human relationships. From a supply-chain perspective, the more useful question is which functions technology can perform during the hours when no person is providing direct care. If Hug shares human strength, Hyodol touches another part of care: some of the time, observation, reminders, conversation, and interaction that people otherwise provide.

If that role widens, the supply chain around conversational AI care robots may also change. Conversation and reminders can lead to monitoring of daily status; detected changes can lead to risk alerts; those alerts can then connect to family members, care workers, or healthcare professionals.

At that point, the relationship between the company selling the robot and the organization providing care also changes. Who reviews the data collected by the robot? Who responds to which change, and when should a situation be handed back to human care? The robot remains a device in the home, but the information and interaction it generates must reconnect with the human care supply chain.

It is therefore difficult to describe the next phase of care robotics only in terms of how much human labor robots replace. Current cases suggest a movement from devices that supplement human bodies and strength toward technologies that can also share some observation and interaction during the hours when people are absent.

Will Care AI Agents Take On Judgment and Operations?

If robots enter the care supply chain through visible physical action and interaction, AI is entering through a different route.

Home care already generates large amounts of information: who visited and when; what service was provided; how a person ate and slept; whether medication was taken; whether there was a recent fall; and whether behavior or health status has changed. As services multiply, scheduling, staffing, family communication, care records, and coordination become more complex as well.

As these data accumulate, there is more room for AI to read and interpret information before a human has to review every record manually.

AI agents suggest a further step. Rather than waiting for a person to open software and search for information, an agent can read across data, suggest what needs to happen next, and potentially execute parts of the workflow.

Sensi.AI in the United States provides a relatively clear example. Sensi describes itself as a 24/7 AI operating system for care in the home. It continuously gathers information from the home environment and identifies changes in condition, with the aim of helping care providers move from reactive to more proactive care. Its product suite includes not only a Care Agent but also an Ops Agent supporting operational work and a Growth Agent supporting business expansion.

The Ops Agent, in particular, handles tasks such as communicating with care workers, confirming shifts, and responding to last-minute absences. Some of the repetitive operational work that staff once handled through phone calls and messages is therefore moving toward tasks executed by AI.

Sensi does not replace a care worker by physically entering the home. Yet it can occupy an important position in the supply chain. Once AI continuously reads field data, identifies which clients have experienced changes, and also manages operational questions such as who should visit, upstream software no longer functions merely as a record-keeping tool. Its role shifts from storing records to monitoring conditions, then toward decision support and the execution of selected operational tasks.

AI is not entering only provider operations. As the Hyodol case suggests, technology is also moving toward continuous observation of users’ everyday and emotional states. This makes developments in mental health particularly relevant.

WithBuddy, developed by Korea’s Hippo T&C, is an AI-based everyday emotional-management service. AI analyzes information generated as users complete missions; a virtual companion initiates conversations and recommends daily activities. The service also includes AI counseling, mood diaries, meditation, and breathing exercises.

Following the company’s product portfolio further reveals another level. Hippo T&C’s BlueKare is a software medical device for the treatment and management of depressive disorder, authorized in Korea as a digital therapeutic device for depression. It includes cognitive and emotional training, self-recording, and AI-based personalized feedback.

It would be inaccurate to call BlueKare a care AI agent. It is a clinician-prescribed digital therapeutic. But from a care supply-chain perspective, the case points in an important direction: some interventions that once required a person to visit a hospital or counseling institution are moving through smartphones into everyday living environments.

Placed beside Hyodol, these examples show a wider range of ways technology is beginning to engage with users’ emotional lives. On one side, a conversational care robot remains in the home, interacts continuously with an older person, and observes changes in daily life. On the other, AI-based services analyze emotional states and provide everyday psychological support; where symptoms enter the domain of medical treatment, digital therapeutics can intervene. These are not yet one integrated service. They operate in different markets and institutional systems.

Yet they raise a supply-chain question. When AI that offers conversation or emotional support detects a meaningful change in a user, what should the next service be?

The system might alert family or a care worker, connect the user with local cultural or social activities, refer the person to a mental-health professional, or link someone who needs treatment to medical care. If culture-based care, discussed earlier, provides one route for reconnecting people with culture and community, AI and digital technologies in Upstream Industries may offer another route: continuously reading changes in a person’s condition and helping identify an appropriate response.

This is where the supply-chain significance of AI agents emerges. Upstream software has traditionally recorded or transmitted decisions made by people. If AI begins reading care records and everyday data, identifying risk earlier, suggesting providers, and executing selected tasks such as scheduling or staffing, its position in the supply chain may change.

This does not mean that AI should take over all care judgments. Deciding which signal constitutes a risk, when to involve a healthcare professional, and what choice is appropriate in a particular person’s life still requires human professional judgment and responsibility. As emotional and mental-health data become more sensitive, privacy, consent, and accountability for errors also become more important.

The next stage of care AI agents is therefore less a question of “how much can AI replace people?” than of which parts of human judgment and operations AI can appropriately share—and which must remain with people.

Care robots and AI agents belong to different technology industries. Hug supplements the physical labor of care workers by helping users stand and transfer. Hyodol remains in the living environment and shares parts of conversation, reminders, observation, and emotional interaction. Sensi.AI reads information generated in the home and care setting and supports provider judgment and operations. Hippo T&C’s products show digital interventions moving between everyday emotional support and the medical system.

There is no need to combine these technologies into one industry. From the supply-chain perspective, however, a common change is visible. Upstream Industries once primarily supplied equipment and technology that enabled people to provide care. Some emerging technologies are beginning to enter parts of the care delivery process itself.

They share human strength, observe everyday life when no person is present, converse with users, read records and flag risks, and perform parts of scheduling and workforce operations. How far this role will expand remains uncertain. Care quality is not created simply by performing tasks accurately; relationships, context, accountability, and human judgment remain central. What is changing is not the disappearance of people from care, but the division of functions between people and technology.

The Core Care Industry is bringing home-based healthcare and care together. Downstream Industries are adding care functions to housing, lifestyle services, everyday local infrastructure, culture, and community. Upstream Industries are moving robotics and AI into parts of the care process itself. When movements that began in different places start meeting in the same person’s home, the remaining question is no longer only how far each industry boundary will expand. It is how these supply chains will be reorganized around the home.

5. Reorganizing the Care Supply Chain Around the Home

Part 3 divided the current care-industry ecosystem into the Core Care Industry, Downstream Industries, and Upstream Industries. The central finding was that the boundaries between them were already moving. Housing and lifestyle services were incorporating care functions, while robotics and platforms were moving forward from their earlier position as suppliers of technologies and connecting systems behind care. Modes of supply were also beginning to shift: from product sales to service-based models, from stand-alone services to integrated offerings, from individual providers to supply-chain integration, from one-off transactions to ongoing management, and from institution-centered to home-centered delivery.

The cases in Part 5 suggest that this movement may go one step further.

Within the Core Care Industry, cases such as Ansan and Cera show home-based healthcare and care becoming connected within the same living environment. Downstream, Housing 21 adds care to housing; Duskin Life Care brings daily-living support into the home; Kawakami Life combines local everyday infrastructure with community networks; and cultural social prescribing and Tangdou connect care-related functions with culture and community. Upstream, FUJI’s Hug shares part of physical labor, Hyodol provides conversation and monitoring during hours when people are absent, and Sensi.AI links information on changes in condition with operational work. Digital technology is also moving from everyday emotional support toward domains closer to medical intervention.

Taken separately, these are changes in very different industries. Home-based healthcare, housing, lifestyle services, culture, robotics, and AI do not form one industry. Their providers, payment models, and regulatory systems differ. Yet from the perspective of the supply chain, they converge at one place: the home where an older person lives.

Different Industries Are Moving Toward the Same Home

In conventional supply chains, roles could be viewed as relatively separate. Healthcare organizations provided healthcare; long-term care providers supplied care; housing companies supplied homes; lifestyle-service companies supplied everyday services; and technology companies provided equipment and systems from behind the scenes.

Once we shift the viewpoint to the older person’s home, those boundaries become less stable. Home-based healthcare, long-term care, and daily-living support meet in the same place. Housing 21 integrates care into housing. Duskin Life Care accompanies people to hospitals and provides monitoring and companionship. Rural lifestyle services can become touchpoints for checking well-being and health.

Culture and technology also move toward the same life. Cultural social prescribing and Tangdou reconnect people with culture and community. Hyodol and AI can create touchpoints through which information from the hours when people are absent is passed into the next stage of care.

The likely future shown by these cases is not one giant company supplying everything. As the number of functions required to sustain life at home increases, the number and variety of suppliers may increase as well.

That creates the next problem: who will connect so many providers within one person’s life?

Competition May Shift From Individual Products to the Ability to Connect

When only a small number of services enter the home, the supply chain is relatively simple. If someone needs home care, the family finds a home-care provider. If the person needs medical treatment, they use a hospital or clinic.

Once home-based healthcare and nursing, long-term care and daily-living support, housing and mobility, meals and culture, robots and AI all enter the same life, the user needs more than a larger number of services.

Someone must determine what is needed now and identify whom to ask. Existing services must be adjusted when health status changes. A change observed by a clinician may need to reach a care worker, and a change noticed during daily-living support may need to flow back into healthcare.

In Ansan, several professional domains are connected around one person’s life. Cera shows an established home-care provider expanding toward nursing and complex health management. A lifestyle concierge such as THE CLASSIC 500 seeks to become an everyday touchpoint connecting health, healthcare, and lifestyle services within a residential setting. Sensi.AI is moving into a position between information from the care setting and operational work.

This is why everyday touchpoints, data, service coordination, and the ability to reliably supply the final human labor required in the home may become sources of competitive advantage.

As this shift progresses, competitiveness may depend less on how many products a company owns and more on whether it remains in continuous contact with the user’s daily life. Who notices changes first? Who can identify and connect the right provider? And at the end of the chain, who can actually send a person into the home to deliver the service? Those capabilities may determine whether the supply chain works.

The center of the supply chain does not necessarily have to be occupied by one company. In cities, specialized companies, healthcare organizations, housing providers, and platforms may divide roles. In rural areas with small markets, local government, resident organizations, and existing lifestyle services may form the supply chain together, as in Kawakami Life.

Future competition, then, may be less about putting every service inside one company and more about how seamlessly different providers can be connected around one person’s life.

The Home Can Shift From Where Services Arrive to Where the Supply Chain Is Organized

If those connections continue to deepen, the meaning of the home also changes.

Until now, the home has largely been the destination where services arrive. A care worker, nurse, or lifestyle-service provider comes in with a particular service and then leaves.

In the cases examined here, however, parts of the supply chain begin to remain inside the home itself.

Care-enabled housing such as Housing 21 is designed and operated from the outset to receive care. Conversational AI care robots such as Hyodol remain in the home after the human visit has ended. Sensors and AI can monitor changes in everyday life when no person is present. Home-based healthcare brings some of the medical care once delivered in hospitals into the home.

Not every connection moves inward. Culture-based care creates an outward connection. Living safely alone at home is not enough to sustain a life. Cultural social prescribing in the United Kingdom connects people with local cultural activities, while Tangdou in China uses dance and exercise to support relationships and participation among middle-aged and older people.

The home may therefore become more than the final destination of multiple services. Healthcare and care enter; housing and lifestyle services support them; technology observes everyday life; and, when needed, the system reconnects the person with culture and community. The home can become an everyday hub of the care supply chain.

Part 3 described a supply structure in which people, housing, healthcare, daily-living services, technology, and data connect around the home. The developments in Part 5 suggest something further: the home may become not simply a place where many services gather, but a reference point around which the sequence and relationships among services are reorganized.

Will a Home Shared by People and Care Robots Really Be So Unusual?

Among the changes emerging from Upstream Industries, care robots may eventually alter the visible appearance of the home more than almost anything else.

A care robot in the home still feels unusual today. It is often viewed as a specialized device for people with high care needs.

Yet everyday technologies rarely begin as everyday technologies. Smartphones were once primarily devices for calling and messaging. Over time, finance, shopping, mobility, health management, entertainment, and relationships moved into the same device, turning it into a basic tool of daily life. Care robots will not necessarily follow the same path. But as robotics, AI, sensors, and smart-home technologies combine, it is reasonable to imagine home devices with a much wider range of functions than today’s care robots.

Those functions are already developing in different directions. Some robots, like Hug, lift and transfer users. Others, like Hyodol, converse with people and monitor daily life. AI can read the information generated through those interactions and identify changes, while care providers can use that information to decide what the next visit or service should be.

The future question may therefore be less “caregiver or robot?” than how older adults, caregivers, care robots, AI, and home-based healthcare and care teams might together form one supply chain.

When no person is visiting, robots and AI may monitor daily life. When the caregiver arrives, the worker may use information about what changed in the intervening hours and focus on the care most needed that day. A change in health may trigger nursing or home-based medical care. If loneliness or social disconnection becomes more serious, the person may be connected with cultural or community activities.

It would be premature to say that this is about to become normal. Accuracy and safety, cost and maintenance, privacy and accountability, and user acceptance all remain unresolved issues.

Above all, there are parts of care that remain difficult for technology to replace. Part 3 concluded that even when a sensor detects something unusual, AI coordinates services, and a robot assists movement, someone still has to enter the home, wash the person’s body, help with meals, and judge situations that were never anticipated.

Even in a future with more care robots, the first visible change may therefore be not a choice between human care and robot care, but a division of time and functions between caregivers and machines.

Competition in care will not then be determined only by the performance of one robot. What will matter is which robots and AI systems can connect with home-based healthcare, which care providers exchange information with them, and which lifestyle services and smart-home systems can operate alongside them.

A care robot, in other words, does not end as a product. Its strategic significance depends on the position it occupies within the larger care supply chain.

When Does a Home Become a Place of Care?

This series began with a single question: When does a home become a place of care?

Installing a handrail does not by itself make a home a place of care. Bringing home-based healthcare inside does not automatically connect healthcare and care. A care robot in the home, or AI monitoring someone’s condition, does not by itself sustain everyday life. Nor does the existence of a cultural program automatically solve loneliness or the problem of human connection.

What a person needs in order to remain at home changes over time.

At one point, the need may be meals and cleaning. On another day, it may be accompaniment to a medical appointment. As physical function declines, home care and nursing may become necessary; after discharge, home-based healthcare and rehabilitation may be added. Long periods alone may create a need for well-being checks and conversation, while maintaining relationships requires places and activities through which people can meet others. Across these needs, robots and AI may supplement some of the strength, time, observation, and judgment once supplied only by people.

Each of these products and services is produced by a different industry.

But what matters to the person receiving them is not which industry each one belongs to. The questions are more immediate: Does the right service arrive when it is needed? When a person’s condition changes, does the next service follow? Does necessary support continue during the hours when no one is providing direct care? And can the person continue living in the home and community they know?

That is why the moment when a home becomes a place of care cannot be located in a single product, company, or technology.

Healthcare and care connect. Housing and lifestyle services support them. Culture and community sustain relationships. A caregiver supports the person’s body and daily life, while robots and AI supplement some of the hours and functions when no human caregiver is present. As needs change, the mix of providers changes with them.

When products and services from different industries are connected so that one person’s daily life remains continuous, separate suppliers begin to move as one care supply chain.

And when that supply chain begins to operate around the home and community where a person has long lived, the home becomes a place of care.

About the Author

Dr. Sung-Ki Kim (Ph.D. in Social Welfare)

Director, The Care Biz Lab

Chairman, SE Empower Social Cooperative

Email: skkwelfare@gmail.com

References

1. International Organizations, Government, and Public Institutions

• OECD. (2025). The Economic Benefit of Promoting Healthy Ageing and Community Care. OECD Health Policy Studies. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/0f7bc62b-en.

• OECD. (2024). Is Care Affordable for Older People? OECD Health Policy Studies. OECD Publishing. DOI: 10.1787/450ea778-en.

• NHS England. (n.d.). Virtual wards. https://www.england.nhs.uk/virtual-wards/ (accessed August 20, 2026).

• NHS England. (2024). Summary of South East Region Virtual Wards Evaluation. https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/summary-of-south-east-region-virtual-wards-evaluation/ (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea. (March 27, 2026). Vice Minister Lee Sran Visits a Local Community Service Center in Geumcheon-gu on the First Day of Integrated Community Care Implementation. [Korean-language source].

• Ministry of Health and Welfare, Republic of Korea. (2025). Guidelines for the Long-Term Care Home Medical Center Pilot Program (Notice No. 2025-20). [Korean-language source].

• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan. (2024–2025). Materials on Priority Areas for the Use of Care Technology. [Japanese-language source].

• Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan. (2024). Materials on revisions to the Priority Areas for the Use of Care Technology. [Japanese-language source].

• Greater London Authority. (n.d.). Cultural social prescribing. London City Hall. https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/arts-and-culture/creative-health-and-wellbeing/cultural-social-prescribing (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Greater London Authority. (n.d.). Creative health and wellbeing. London City Hall. https://www.london.gov.uk/programmes-strategies/arts-and-culture/creative-health-and-wellbeing (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Kawakami Village, Nara Prefecture. Official materials on Kawakami Life and local daily-living support. [Japanese-language source].

• Gunma Prefecture. Case-study materials on shopping support and mobile retail in depopulating areas. [Japanese-language source].

• Ansan City. Integrated Healthcare and Long-Term Care Program. [Korean-language source].

2. Company and Industry Cases

• Ansan Health and Welfare Social Cooperative. Business and organizational overview. [Korean-language source].

• Cera Care. (n.d.). Care at Home. https://ceracare.co.uk/home-care (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Cera Care. (n.d.). Nurse Led Complex Care Services. https://ceracare.co.uk/complex-care (accessed August 20, 2026).

• THE CLASSIC 500. (n.d.). Hotel-Style Service: One Stop Service. https://www.theclassic500.com/service/onestop.do (accessed August 20, 2026).

• THE CLASSIC 500. (n.d.). Medical Service. https://www.theclassic500.com/service/medical.do (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Konkuk University Medical Center. (May 15, 2026). THE CLASSIC 500 and Hyundai E&C’s THE H Enter the Senior Life-Care Market. [Korean-language source].

• Housing 21. (n.d.). More than a landlord. https://www.housing21.org.uk/residents/living-with-us/more-than-a-landlord/ (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Housing 21. (n.d.). Extra Care. https://www.housing21.org.uk/properties/what-are-my-options/extra-care/ (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Duskin Co., Ltd. (n.d.). Duskin Life Care. https://www.duskin.jp/lifecare/ (accessed August 20, 2026). [Japanese-language source].

• Duskin Co., Ltd. (n.d.). Hospital and Outpatient Accompaniment. https://www.duskin.jp/lifecare/service/service02.html (accessed August 20, 2026). [Japanese-language source].

• Kawakami Life. (n.d.). Mobile Supermarket and Delivery + Accompanying Nurses and Dental Hygienists + Well-Being Checks. https://kawakamilife.com/super/ (accessed August 20, 2026). [Japanese-language source].

• Tangdou (糖豆). (n.d.). About Tangdou. https://www.tangdou.com/about/ (accessed August 20, 2026). [Chinese-language source].

• FUJI Corporation. (March 2, 2026). Latest Transfer-Support Robot for Home Care, Hug L1-02, to Open for Orders in Late March 2026. https://hug.fuji.co.jp/news/548/. [Japanese-language source].

• Hyodol. (n.d.). AI Care Platform / Company. https://hyodol.com/company (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Sensi.AI. (n.d.). Agentic Operating System for Senior Care / Product. https://www.sensi.ai/product/ (accessed August 20, 2026).

• Hippo T&C. (June 16, 2025). BlueKare Receives Korean Regulatory Authorization as a Digital Therapeutic for Depression. [Korean-language source].

• Hippo T&C. (April 2026). Materials on BlueKare’s deferred new-health-technology assessment and clinical prescribing. [Korean-language source].

• Amazon. (2021; 2025 update). Alexa Together launches to help customers remotely care for loved ones. About Amazon.

• Amazon. (May 21, 2025 update). Alexa Together is helping bridge the miles between families. About Amazon.

• Amazon. (2025; updated July 21, 2026). Introducing Alexa+: skills, cost, and availability. About Amazon.

3. Research and Other References

• Kim, Sung-Ki. (2026). Case Studies of Care Social Enterprise Business Models. The Chaeum Care Startup Management Lab. [Korean-language source].

• Lee, Wi-jae, Nam, Min-woo, Bae, Jeong-won. (2022). The Longevity Economy Is Coming: Leading Companies Competing for the $15 Trillion Senior Market. Hans Contents. [Korean-language source].

• An, J., Xia, C., Xu, J., Li, W., & Ding, J. (2024). Dancing with care: promoting social integration and participation in community activities for older adults. Frontiers in Public Health, 12, 1405561. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1405561.

• Jung, H. W., Lee, J., Park, J. Y., Kim, W. J., & Park, J. (2026). Detection of depression risk among older adults using home-deployed socially assistive robots: a real-world study. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 17, 1740539. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2026.1740539.

• Gou, W., Lefebvre, F., Yang, T., Recours, R., & Yang, J. (2026). Effectiveness of AI-based conversational and socially assistive agents in older adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis. BMC Geriatrics, 26, 887. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-026-07418-6.