Improved accuracy and efficiency of primary care fall risk screening of older adults using a machine learning approach.

Journal: Journal of the American Geriatrics Society
Published Date: Jan 13, 2024

Abstract

BACKGROUND: While many falls are preventable, they remain a leading cause of injury and death in older adults. Primary care clinics largely rely on screening questionnaires to identify people at risk of falls. Limitations of standard fall risk screening questionnaires include suboptimal accuracy, missing data, and non-standard formats, which hinder early identification of risk and prevention of fall injury. We used machine learning methods to develop and evaluate electronic health record (EHR)-based tools to identify older adults at risk of fall-related injuries in a primary care population and compared this approach to standard fall screening questionnaires.

Authors

  • Wenyu Song
    Division of General Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Nancy K Latham
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Luwei Liu
    Department of Orthodontics, The Affiliated Stomatological Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, 210029, China. liuluwei_orth@njmu.edu.cn.
  • Hannah E Rice
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Michael Sainlaire
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Lillian Min
    Department of Internal Medicine, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA.
  • Linying Zhang
    Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.
  • Tien Thai
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Min-Jeoung Kang
    Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, USA. mkang6@bwh.harvard.edu.
  • Siyun Li
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Christian Tejeda
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Stuart Lipsitz
    Department of Cardiology, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; Division of General Internal Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Lipika Samal
    Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Diane L Carroll
    Yvonne L. Munn Center for Nursing Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Lesley Adkison
    Department of Nursing and Patient Care Services, Newton Wellesley Hospital, Newton, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Lisa Herlihy
    Division of Nursing, Salem Hospital, Salem, Massachusetts, USA.
  • Virginia Ryan
    Division of Nursing, Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, USA.
  • David W Bates
    Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts.
  • Patricia C Dykes
    Division of General Internal Medicine and Primary Care, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States.

Keywords

External Resources

Popular Topics
Recent Journals