Tools for Coordination Among Caregivers of Patients with Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias

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 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This project will develop a state-of-the-art technology platform to support psychosocial interventions for persons with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other dementia (PWD), and their family members and friends (FMs). A tool will be developed that automatically solicits media, allows communicating with caregivers, and checks the quality of media feeding into the SimpleC Companion, a behavior management technology for persons with Alzheimer's disease and other dementia. The main goals are to improve therapy personalization, make it scalable, thereby positively affecting the effectiveness of the SimpleC care intervention. The number of people with dementia is large and growing. Approximately 5.3 million people in the U.S. and 44 million worldwide have dementia. These estimates are expected to nearly triple by 2050. Currently, there is no cure and the cost to families, the health care system, and society is large. Not only is dementia the sole top 10 U.S. disease that cannot be prevented, cured, or slowed; but it is also one of the costliest chronic diseases- estimated national cost is $226 billion (half of which is carried by Medicare) and expected to rise to $1.1 trillion by 2050 if nothing changes. In addition, there are few tools to meet the needs of this population. The general approach is medication, which is costly and sedates people with dementia rather than engaging them. Psychosocial interventions, such as those offered by SimpleC, are alternatives to pharmacology to address dementia-related symptoms while improving both quality of care and quality of life. Personalization is one key ingredient to the success of the interventions. While SimpleC's highly personalized interventions, human customer service, and advanced wireless computing network enable the creation and delivery of meaningful care interventions on a large, cost-effective scale; these interventions still require significant manpower to gather personalized therapeutic content, which is usually non-digital, e.g., Polaroid pictures, reel-to-reel audio and video tape from caregivers and family members who are likely very busy, stressed, and may live far away. The first goal of the proposed project mitigates this barrier by reducing manpower requirements, providing guidance to caregivers, and enabling even wider spread deployment. Furthermore, this project will both increase and sustain care recipients' engagement, which is crucial to psychosocial interventions. The second goal addresses communication needs between care giving parties. The proposed project addresses the challenge of offering a channel to communicate that is respectful of busy schedules and high workloads of all involved. The project will assess technology acceptance and barriers in the field. In phase I AME demonstrated feasibility of a caregiver tool that supports the collection of media required for psychosocial interventions and facilitates communication between staff caregivers and family members/friends of older adults with dementia. In phase II AME will partner with SimpleC to expand and integrate this functionality into their technology platform and products as well as conduct an in-market test of the entire platform. Testing will occur in the long-term care facility (high staff and high resident turnover) and home market (where the majority of persons with dementia (PWD) live).