Improving Short-Term Memory Loss in Patients with Alzheimer’s Dementia Using Smartphone Application for Capturing Daily Life Moments
Live webinar held November 10, 2011
People with Alzheimer’s Dementia suffer from confusion, disorganized thinking, impaired judgment, trouble in expressing themselves and disorientation. In most of the patients, these patterns result in short-term memory loss. Previous research studies determined that external aids can be used to recall the past memories, thus improving the quality of life of the people with Alzheimer’s Dementia. Since, short-term memory is rich with visions; reviewing images of previous experiences should be helpful in recollecting memories of past life. In this research study, everyday activities are captured with a smart phone worn by the patient with a lanyard. The smart phone will be programmed to take a picture, for every five minutes. These pictures are uploaded to a remote and secure server through the Internet connection available on the smart phone. This is a continuous and automatic process without any involvement or conscious of the patients. The images received will be combined in a slide show and stored into a DVD and mailed to the patient’s home once in a week, so that they can be viewed. Caregivers are asked to review the slide show together with the patients. Caregivers will also collect structured data by using a standardized questionnaire. From the data collected, this study is to determine if the consistent review of earlier events with pictures helps the patient in arousing the memories of past experiences. The project also aims to investigate if the images collected through the smart phone form a complete and rational collection of past events.
Authors:
E. Brivio, Old Dominion University, College of Health Sciences, Norfolk, United States
S. W. Sautter Hampton Roads Neuropsychology Virginia Beach VA, United States
G. De Leo, Old Dominion University, College of Health Sciences, Norfolk, United States
PRESENTER:
Gianluca De Leo is an Assistant Professor at the Medical Laboratory and Radiation Sciences department at Old Dominion University. Dr. De Leo received an MS in Electronic Engineering (1999) and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering and Bioelectronics (2003) from the University of Genoa, Italy and an MBA (2005) from Saint Louis University, St. Louis. Dr. De Leo was involved in several projects related to e-health, biomedical informatics, virtual reality and mobile health, which were funded by the Italian Ministry of Health, the European Commission and the National Institutes of Health, Microsoft Research, the Virginia Center on Aging and several SBIR/STTR programs. Dr. De Leo is currently leading research projects related to the design, the development and the assessment of different e-health systems for children with disabilities.
MODERATOR:
Tracey Gendron, MSG, Assistant Professor, Department of Gerontology, completed the Masters in Gerontology program in 1995 with a concentration in Public Administration from VCU. She is also currently a doctoral student in the Developmental Psychology program at VCU. She teaches the Biology and Physiology of Aging, Research Methods, Grant Writing among other courses in the Gerontology Department. Her research interests include the professional identity development of Gerontologists, health disparities in the aging population and higher education through service learning and community engagement.
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The free webinar was co-sponsored by VACAPI and the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Department of Gerontology and funded in part by the Virginia Center on Aging’s Geriatric Training and Education Initiative.
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