Artificial intelligence for falls management in older adult care: A scoping review of nurses' role

AIM: This study aims to synthesize evidence on nurses' involvement in artificial intelligence research for managing falls in older adults. BACKGROUND: Artificial intelligence techniques are used to analyse health datasets to aid clinical decision making, patient care and service delivery but nurses' involvement in this area of research for managing falls in older adults remains unknown. EVALUATION: A scoping review was conducted. CINAHL, the Cochrane Library, Embase, MEDLI and PubMed were searched. Results were screened against inclusion criteria. Relevant data were extracted, and studies summarized using a descriptive approach. KEY ISSUES: The evidence shows many artificial intelligence techniques, particularly machine learning, are used to identify falls risk factors and build predictive models that could help prevent falls in older adults, with nurses leading and participating in this research. CONCLUSION: Further rigorous experimental research is needed to determine the effectiveness of algorithms in predicting aspects of falls in older adults and how to implement artificial intelligence tools in gerontological nursing practice. IMPLICATIONS FOR NURSING MANAGEMENT: Nurses should pursue interdisciplinary collaborations and educational opportunities in artificial intelligence, so they can actively contribute to research on falls management. Nurses should facilitate the collection of digital falls datasets to support this emerging research agenda and the care of older adults.