Scoping Review Examines Embodied Intelligence in Health Care

The Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR) published a scoping review titled "Embodied Intelligence Applications in Health Care Populations" (JMIR 2026;29:e83871, published June 12, 2026). The review maps and categorizes existing applications of embodied intelligence -- defined as artificial intelligence instantiated in physical or virtual bodies capable of perceiving, communicating, and interacting with users -- across health care populations.

The review uses "embodied intelligence" as a unifying term covering AI systems that have a physical or avatar-based presence -- such as humanoid or companion robots, virtual agents projected through screens or mixed-reality interfaces, and socially assistive robots -- as distinct from text-only or audio-only AI. The scoping methodology systematically surveys published literature to identify the range of clinical and health-adjacent contexts where such systems have been studied or deployed.

For researchers and designers working on patient-facing AI, the review provides a structured map of how embodied intelligence has been applied in clinical and care settings, which application categories have the most evidence, and where gaps exist. Scoping reviews of this type inform both research agendas and practical design decisions by showing which interaction modalities, health populations, and use cases have been addressed and which remain underexplored.

As a scoping review, the paper surveys the existing literature rather than introducing new technical results or clinical findings. The scope of the evidence base and specific findings were not independently verifiable from publicly accessible search results at time of audit; claims beyond the title and methodology are grounded in the stored abstract and general JMIR publication standards.