Artificial Intelligence in COVID-19-Related Geriatric Care: A Scoping Review

Older adults have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This scoping review aimed to summarize the current evidence of artificial intelligence (AI) use in the screening/monitoring, diagnosis, and/or treatment of older adults during the COVID-19 pandemic. The review followed the Joanna Briggs Institute and Arksey and O'Malley frameworks. Six databases were searched from inception till May 25, 2021, yielding 3,228 articles, of which 10 were included. The majority of articles deployed a single AI model to evaluate associativity between patients’ comorbidities and COVID-19 outcomes. Articles were mainly conducted in high-income countries, lacked female representativity and inadequately reported participants' race and ethnicity. This review highlighted how the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the application of AI to protect older populations, with most interventions in the pilot testing stage. Further work is required to measure AI effectiveness on a larger scale, use more representative datasets, and expand AI applications to low-income countries.