BERT-Based Neural Network for Inpatient Fall Detection From Electronic Medical Records: Retrospective Cohort Study

Background: Inpatient falls are a substantial concern for health care providers and are associated with negative outcomes for patients. Automated detection of falls using machine learning (ML) algorithms may aid in improving patient safety and reducing the occurrence of falls. Objective: This study aims to develop and evaluate an ML algorithm for inpatient fall detection using multidisciplinary progress record notes and a pretrained Bidirectional Encoder Representation from Transformers (BERT) language model. Methods: A cohort of 4323 adult patients admitted to 3 acute care hospitals in Calgary, Alberta, Canada from 2016 to 2021 were randomly sampled. Trained reviewers determined falls from patient charts, which were linked to electronic medical records and administrative data. The BERT-based language model was pretrained on clinical notes, and a fall detection algorithm was developed based on a neural network binary classification architecture. Results: To address various use scenarios, we developed 3 different Alberta hospital notes-specific BERT models: a high sensitivity model (sensitivity 97.7, IQR 87.7-99.9), a high positive predictive value model (positive predictive value 85.7, IQR 57.2-98.2), and the high F1-score model (F1=64.4). Our proposed method outperformed 3 classical ML algorithms and an International Classification of Diseases code-based algorithm for fall detection, showing its potential for improved performance in diverse clinical settings. Conclusions: The developed algorithm provides an automated and accurate method for inpatient fall detection using multidisciplinary progress record notes and a pretrained BERT language model. This method could be implemented in clinical practice to improve patient safety and reduce the occurrence of falls in hospitals.