AURA-ALZ: Connecting Audio and Radio Sensing Systems to Improve Care at Home for Persons with Early Alzheimer's Disease Or Related Dementias And Their Caregivers

AURA-ALZ：连接音频和无线电传感系统以改善患有老年痴呆症的人的家庭护理

AURA-ALZ: Connecting Audio and Radio Sensing Systems to Improve Care at Home for Persons with Early Alzheimer's Disease Or Related Dementias And Their Caregivers ABSTRACT In response to NOT-AG-20-034, the proposed Alzheimer’s-focused supplement will develop Connecting Audio And Radio Sensing Systems To Improve Care At Home for persons with early Alzheimer's disease or related dementias (ADRD) and their caregivers. The research proposed in this supplement aligns with the parent R01 study (R01LM013329). Persons with ADRD and their caregivers routinely confront various complex challenges and experience huge care burden. A common practice in technology-assisted care intervention is to guide patients and family caregivers through web and mobile phone-based training, health-vital monitoring, symptom reporting, and providing feedback and advice. These intervention programs, while have been shown to be effective, have three major demerits. First, a member of the care team (the patient or a family member) has to actively measure and enter patient data into the system, which is error-prone, subjective, and sometimes, forgotten. Second, web or mobile-based interactions can be cumbersome and demanding. Simple tasks like entering data, assessing health status, or getting and responding to an alert require typing and clicking through a series of electronic forms. Third, interactions between the system and the caregiver, especially when the system needs to remind or confirm an intervention, simple notifications and messages on a smartphone/website is often ineffective and unnoticed. To improve technology-based care interventions and to better serve persons with ADRD and their caregivers, the proposed study will adopt a user-centered approach to adapt and extend the AURA system that we have been developing in our ongoing R01. The research aims are: 1) Increase the robustness of the AURA subsystems; 2) Engage stakeholders (persons with early ADRD, caregivers, clinicians) to identify the needs of ADRD care and caregiving to help co-produce AURA-ALZ for persons with early ADRD and their caregivers; 3) Determine the usability, acceptability, and feasibility of AURA-ALZ in 10 persons with early ADRD and caregiver dyads' homes using mixed methods. Our current R01 aims to develop a technology- assisted AURA system for patients who are post-surgical treatment for bladder cancer and their caregivers. AURA passively monitors specific activities of a patient at home using WiFi signals, tailors natural language responses of voice assistants based on the patient's state, and automates entering data into the system to reduce the burden on the caregivers of cancer. AURA communicates with the care team in natural languages for reminders and confirmation of collected information, which is intuitive, handsfree, and less demanding. Building upon AURA, AURA-ALZ will have similar but enhanced features to address the unique care needs of persons with ADRD and caregivers. This study addresses the NLM’s mission of enabling biomedical research, supporting health care and public health, and promoting healthy behavior.