Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning: What is the Role of Social Workers, Occupational Therapists, Audiologists, Nurses and Speech Language Pathologists According to Academic Literature and Canadian Newspaper Coverage?

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML) increasingly influences products and processes used by social workers, occupational therapists, audiologists, nurses and speech language pathologists (health professionals for short) in general and in their rehabilitation practice. Health professionals are expected to fulfill many roles and within the narrative of AI/ML health professionals can hold multiple roles. We performed a scoping review using the academic database Scopus, the 70 databases accessible through EBSCO-Host and the database Canadian Newsstream through which we accessed 300 Canadian English language papers as sources. We found minimal engagement with the roles of the covered health professionals related to AI/ML whereby nurses were covered much more than the other health professionals. The main role mentioned for all occupations covered in our study was the one of clinical user. Many other roles expected from health professionals such as being advocates for their field and clients or being policy developers, educators and researchers were rarely or not at all mentioned depending on the health professional. Our role narrative analysis of AI/ML related to the covered health professionals reveals significant gaps in need to be filled.