Dementia App Helps Patients Find Their Memories

app is installed on the phones of the patient and friends, family, and caregivers. Using GPS tracking and a connection to the cloud, the app can flash an alert to the patient when one of the group members is nearby. The phone tells the patient who is approaching and his or her relationship to that person, and it displays a slideshow of previously uploaded pictures. If the patient receives a text or phone call from someone registered in the app, a screen pops up with similar information.

Once a conversation begins, the app can assist with reminders based on stored facts and previous conversations, suggesting questions or reminding the patient of important life events. The developers also plan to apply natural-language processing techniques on the patient's speech patterns to predict what they might say next. Caregivers can send reminders to the patient to take their medicine, make phone calls, or complete particular tasks, and they can use the GPS feature to locate the patient. The app was demonstrated at the 123rd annual conference of the American Society for Engineering Education St. Lawrence Conference, held at Cornell during April 2016.

“We found that each one of us at some point of time had interacted with people who suffer memory loss. We thought we should build something that would help bring back memories,” said app co-developer software engineer Karthik Venkataramaiah, MSc. “In anyone with a memory loss the first thing you do is to show them pictures and see if they are able to get back the memories. The app was developed after about a month of consultation with people who have friends or relatives with dementia.”

Dementia is an overall term for the wide range of symptoms associated with a decline in memory or other cognitive skills severe enough to reduce a person's ability to perform everyday activities. The incidence of dementia is growing globally, with a new patient being diagnosed approximately every 7 seconds. It is estimated that by 2050 there will be 11-19 million people in the USA alone living with dementia, of which Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form.

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