Technology to support persons with cognitive impairment with everyday activities

Abstract

Participants: W.A. Rogers (USA), N. Charness (USA), R. M. Mudar (USA), M. van Tilborg (Netherlands), and H. Kort (Netherlands). ISSUE Cognitive impairment is a common age-related health issue worldwide in older adults. Currently, around 50 million live with a severe form of cognitive impairment and this number is expected to reach 132 million by 2050 (WHO, 2024). Persons with cognitive impairment (PwCI) experience changes in one or more cognitive functions including memory, attention, language, executive function impacting their ability to independently carry out everyday activities. Advances in technology offer promising avenues to support PwCI with these everyday activities provided these technologies are carefully designed to meet the unique needs and preferences of this population. CONTENT Our symposium is designed to bring together speakers from the USA and Netherlands on the theme of using technology to support PwCI in their everyday activities. The speakers will highlight: 1) how technology interventions can assist PwCI by addressing the challenges experienced in their everyday activities, 2) considerations for developing technology, and 3) examples of research on technology-based supports and interventions conducted in USA and Netherlands. STRUCTURE Rogers will discuss the development of a system to support personal activities and reinforce cognition (SPARC) for PwCI sharing insights from evaluation of the research literature on needs of PwCI, interviews with clinicians, and a focus group with technical experts. This multi-faceted needs assessment approach will guide the design of the system to support everyday activities, primarily in the home environment.  Charness will outline the AUGMENT project focusing on creating tutorials for applications such as Google Maps and UBER to support mobility for people with cognitive impairment (CI).  Spatial navigation is often impaired in addition to memory for those with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), post-stroke CI, and traumatic brain injury (TBI).  Charness will discuss design and usability challenges for tutorial development. Mudar will talk about the MedManage study focusing on redesigning and optimizing a mobile medication adherence system for medication self-management in persons with MCI. Persons with MCI are at increased risk of medication non-adherence due to deficits in prospective memory and mobile health interventions offer promising avenue to support medication self-management. Mudar will discuss how Medication Education, Decision Support, Reminding, and Monitoring-Memory (MEDSReM-M) mobile app was developed to meet the needs of those with MCI through cognitive walkthroughs, needs assessments, and usability testing. van Tilborg will describe her current research for enhancing self-management of the use of (artificial tears) eye drops for people with Parkinson disease, to prevent visual impairment. The role of the person with Parkinson disease and that of the professionals involved will be addressed. Professor Kort, will act as the discussant, bringing together the perspective of the different Gerontechnology domains that are addressed in this symposium, namely Housing and Daily living, Mobility and Transport, and Health and Self-esteem. CONCLUSION The symposium will present interdisciplinary and international perspectives on developing and implementing technologies to support aging in place to support autonomy and quality of life in PwCI.