Real-Time Monitoring and Predictive Analytics for Preventing and Reducing Restrictive Practices in Health and Social Care: Protocol for a Scoping Review

Background Restrictive practices, including restraint and seclusion, are used across aged care, mental health, and disability support settings to manage behaviors of concern. These practices are associated with substantial ethical, psychological, and physical harms. Digital health technologies, including real-time monitoring systems and AI-enabled predictive analytics, are increasingly used to detect early behavioral escalation. However, detection or prediction alone does not reduce restrictive practices. It remains unclear how these technologies are translated into care actions, decision-making, and measurable outcomes in real-world settings. Objective This scoping review aims to identify and map evidence on real-time monitoring, predictive analytics, and related digital technologies used to prevent or reduce restrictive practices in health and social care. The review will examine the technologies and contexts studied; how technology outputs are translated into care responses and workflows; and the implementation, outcomes, governance, and ethical considerations reported. Methods The review will be conducted in accordance with Joanna Briggs Institute methodology and will be reported using the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews). Librarian-assisted searches were conducted in MEDLINE, CINAHL Ultimate, PsycINFO, Scopus, and IEEE Xplore on March 11, 2026. The executed database search strategies were not modified after Open Science Framework registration. Reference lists of included studies and relevant reviews will be screened using citation chasing. Eligible English-language sources will be those that examine digital technologies linked to care responses intended to reduce restrictive practices or to reported restrictive-practice outcomes. Two reviewers will independently screen records and chart all included sources. Standard scoping-review mapping categories will be used to describe the evidence landscape. The Implementation Research Logic Model will inform analysis of explicitly reported implementation determinants, strategies, mechanisms, and outcomes. Results Electronic database searches were completed on March 11, 2026. Protocol version 5.0 was registered with the Open Science Framework on March 22, 2026. Title and abstract screening had not commenced at the time of registration. The review is expected to be completed by July 2027. Conclusions By clarifying how digital detection and prediction technologies are translated into care actions, and the conditions under which restrictive practice–related outcomes are reported, this review will support safer, more ethical, and more implementable digital health approaches.