Community‐based trials of mobile solutions for the detection and management of cognitive decline

Abstract

This study focused on the development and usability evaluation of EnCare diagnostics (ECD) and the brain fit plan (BFP) in healthy older adults, cognitively impaired and physically impaired individuals. ECD is proposed as a novel solution to cognitive assessment based on colour selection. BFP is a novel solution to personalised cognitive stimulation. The study consisted of two trials designed to evaluate the usability of the apps. Trial 1 involved 11 healthy older adults and four older adults with physical impairments who undertook ECD and mini-mental state examination (MMSE) once per month for 4 months with only those with physical impairments also completing the BFP daily. Trial 2 involved eight older adults diagnosed with early stage dementia who completed MMSE and ECD once per month for 6 months. In Trial 1, 10 out of 11 participants enjoyed the trial and managed the usability of the app easily. A 75% drop out was observed in response to the BFP with issues of dexterity and lack of understanding on how to use the technology being the main reasons for lack of compliance. Four out of eight participants completed Trial 2 with most of the participants having no usability issues. This usability study demonstrated that ECD is highly acceptable in both healthy older adults and those with early stage dementia when given the shorter versions to accommodate their diagnosis. The BFP was not suited to this population of participants.

Mobile-Health Applications for the Efficient Delivery of Health Care Facility to People with Dementia (PwD) and Support to Their Carers: A Survey

“…All cited studies used smartphones and tablets running iOS and Android operating systems. Regarding the categories of studies as mentioned in Table 3, five (05) studies piloted and evaluated the usability of mHealth applications from cognitive training and daily living category [40–44], five (05) studies were from screening of dementia category [45–49], one (01) study combined cognitive training and screening of dementia categories [50], three (03) studies were from health and safety monitoring category [51–53], two (02) studies were from leisure and socialization category [54, 55], and one (01) study covered navigation section [56]. The data extracted from research articles are study, study type, study aim, study methodology, technology type (i.e., mobile, tablet, etc.…”

“…Other three included studies [43, 44, 50] developed applications for engaging PwD in different cognitive exercises. Dethlefs et al [43] used cognitive stimulation technique to involve dementia people in cognitive activities and social functioning, i.e., the conversation about childhood, puzzles, or memory activities.…”

“…The off-the-shelf text-to-speech software converted the text response of wizards into speech. Boyd et al [50] developed EnCare diagnostics (ECD) app and brain fit plan (BFP) app and evaluated the usability on healthy and cognitively and physically impaired older adults. The EnCare diagnostics (ECD) app is used to access the cognitive state of individual (discussed in screening category) while brain fit plan (BFP) is used to suggest PwD different tasks to perform daily.…”

Training Cognitive Functions Using Mobile Apps in Breast Cancer Patients: Systematic Review

“…We excluded a total of two reviews [19,35], five case reports [36][37][38][39][40] and two protocols [41,42]. Sixteen studies were excluded from the present systematic review because they did not use mobile applications to train cognitive functions [20,43,[52][53][54][55][56][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]. Eleven studies were excluded because they used mobile applications only to assess -and not to train -cognitive functions [57,58,67,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66].…”

The role of M-health applications in the fight against Alzheimer’s: current and future directions

“…As it allows doctors to monitor data in real time and have a realtime dialog they can evaluate the mental status of patients more accurately. More recently, Boyd et al (34) developed a mobile application for cognitive assessment based on color selection, named it EnCare. This paper has examined the development and usability of EnCare diagnostics for healthy older adults, cognitively impaired and physically impaired individuals.…”