Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
The role of artificial intelligence in improving digital wellness among the elderly: A comparative bibliometric analysis
ABSTRACT
Background:
Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized digital wellness by providing innovative solutions for health, social connectivity, and overall well-being. Despite these advancements, the elderly population often struggles with barriers such as accessibility, digital literacy, and infrastructure limitations, leaving them at risk of digital exclusion. These challenges underscore the critical need for tailored AI-driven interventions to bridge the digital divide and enhance the inclusion of older adults in the digital ecosystem.
Objective:
This study presented a comparative bibliometric analysis of research on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in promoting digital wellness, with a particular emphasis on the elderly population in comparison to the general population. The analysis addresses five key research topics: (1) the evolution of AI's impact on digital wellness over time for both the elderly and general population; (2) patterns of collaboration globally; (3) leading institutions’ contribution to AI-focused research; (4) prominent journals in the field; and (5) emerging themes and trends in AI-related research.
Methods:
Data were collected from the Web of Science between 1995 and 2024, totaling 2,202 documents (208 related to the elderly), analyzed using bibliometric tools.
Results:
Results indicate that AI-related digital wellness research for the general population has experienced exponential growth since 2019, with significant contributions from the United States, United Kingdom, and China. In contrast, research on the elderly has seen slower growth, with more localized collaboration networks and a steady increase in citations. Key research topics for the general population include digital health, machine learning, and telemedicine, whereas studies on the elderly focus on dementia, mobile health (mHealth), and risk management
Conclusions:
The results of our analysis highlight an increasing body of research focused on AI-driven solutions intended to improve the digital wellness among elderly and identify future research directions to refer to the specific needs of this population segment.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.