SenseCam intervention based on cognitive ctimulation therapy framework for early-stage dementia.

Estimates suggest that Ireland will have 50,000 people with dementia by 2016 and over 100,000 by 2036. Combined with European total costs estimated in 2005 at €130 billion. In the absence of a cure for dementia there is a real need to develop pervasive, user-centered technologies to enhance the well-being and quality of life of people with dementia. This study explores the use of Microsoft SenseCam images within the principles of Cognitive Stimulation Therapy (CST) to engage people with early stage dementia in meaningful discussion. The SenseCam intervention, like the CST approach, is aimed at general enhancement of quality of life and global cognitive and social functioning

AVEID: Automatic Video System for Measuring Engagement In Dementia

Engagement in dementia is typically measured using behavior observational scales (BOS) that are tedious and involve intensive manual labor to annotate, and are therefore not easily scalable. We propose AVEID, a low cost and easy-to-use video-based engagement measurement tool to determine the engagement level of a person with dementia (PwD) during digital interaction. We show that the objective behavioral measures computed via AVEID correlate well with subjective expert impressions for the popular MPES and OME BOS, confirming its viability and effectiveness. Moreover, AVEID measures can be obtained for a variety of engagement designs, thereby facilitating large-scale studies with PwD populations

Technology and dementia: the future is now

Background: Technology has multiple potential applications to dementia from diagnosis and assessment to care delivery and supporting ageing in place. Objectives: To summarise key areas of technology development in dementia and identify future directions and implications. Method: Members of the US Alzheimer’s Association Technology Professional Interest Area involved in delivering the annual pre-conference summarised existing knowledge on current and future technology developments in dementia. Results: The main domains of technology development are as follows: (i) diagnosis, assessment and monitoring, (ii) maintenance of functioning, (iii) leisure and activity, (iv) caregiving and management. Conclusions: The pace of technology development requires urgent policy, funding and practice change, away from a narrow medical approach, to a holistic model that facilitates future risk reduction and pre- vention strategies, enables earlier detection and supports implementation at scale for a meaningful and fulfilling life with dementia

The effect of dyadic interactions on learning rotate gesture for technology-naïve older adults

Older adults having limited experience with modern computing technology may find it difficult to learn touch gestures, especially the more complex rotate gesture. Social interactions, as implied by social constructivism, are assumed to be powerful in enabling older adults to acquire the skill of touch gestures. The social effect can be reinforced with the motivational effect of digital games. To verify the assumption, we conducted empirical studies with 59 older adults, who were divided into two groups: 17 Singles and 21 Dyads. They were asked to play a set of digital games on a multi-touch tabletop. Results show that on average Dyads have spent significantly longer time in the games and have performed a significantly higher number of correct rotate gestures than Singles. Future work focuses on analyzing the emotional aspect of social interactions and identifying further applications of social gaming to other ageing issue

Health Educ Behav

As the segment of the population 65 years of age or older continues to grow, the number of individuals with dementia increases proportionally, highlighting the need to design therapies that meet the social and emotional needs of people with dementia. Information and communication technologies (ICT) are potential venues for supporting the delivery of such therapies, including reminiscence therapy (RT), which is a non-pharmacological intervention involving the prompting of past memories, often with artifacts such as old photographs or music for therapeutic benefits such as the facilitation of social interactions or the increase of self-esteem. This paper systematically examines the scientific literature on the use of ICT for facilitating RT to assess the current state of the evidence and identify future trends. We searched the PubMed (1966-2013), ACM (1954-2013), and PsycINFO (1908-2013) repositories using the keywords dementia and reminiscence. Three hundred eighty-six articles were retrieved, 44 of which met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Findings of the systematic review include that there are benefits to using ICT for RT interventions. Some of these benefits are access to rich and engaging multimedia reminiscence materials, opportunities for people with dementia to participate in social interactions and take ownership of conversations, and a reduction of barriers due to motor deficits during interactions with media. Future studies should explore the types and content of media beneficial to individuals at different stages of dementia.T15 LM007442/LM/NLM NIH HHS/United StatesU38 HM000454/HM/NCHM CDC HHS/United States2T15LM007442/LM/NLM NIH HHS/United States2016-04-26T00:00:00Z25274711PMC484484

Investigating older and younger peoples’ motivations for lifelogging with wearable cameras

People have a natural tendency to collect things about themselves, their experiences and their shared experiences with people important to them, especially family. Similar to traditional objects such as photographs, lifelogs have been shown to support reminiscence. A lifelog is a digital archive of a person’s experiences and activities and lifelog devices such as wearable cameras can automatically and continuously record events throughout a whole day. We were interested in investigating what would motivate people to lifelog. Due to the importance of shared family reminiscence between family members we focused our study on comparing shared or personal motivations with ten older and ten younger family members. We found from our results that both older and younger adults were more likely to lifelog for the purposes of information sharing and that reviewing lifelog images supported family reminiscence, reflection and story-telling. Based on these findings, recommendations are made for the design of a novel intergenerational family lifelog system

ICT-based applications to improve social health and social participation in older adults with dementia. A systematic literature review

OBJECTIVES: Information and communication technologies (ICT) developers, together with dementia experts have created several technological solutions to improve and facilitate social health and social participation and quality of life of older adults living with dementia. However, there is a need to carry out a systematic literature review that focuses on the validity and efficacy of these new technologies assessing their utility to promote ‘social health’ and ‘active ageing’ in people with dementia. METHOD: Searches in electronic databases identified 3824 articles of which 6 met the inclusion criteria and were coded according to their methodological approach, sample sizes, type of outcomes and results. RESULTS: Six papers were identified reporting the use of 10 different interventions with people with dementia. Qualitative studies (four) showed a benefit of the use of technologies to foster social participation in people with dementia. At the same time, barriers to a widespread use of these technologies in this population were identified. A quantitative study and a mixed-method study with quantitative outcomes showed that ICT-based interventions promote more social behaviours than non-technology-based interventions. CONCLUSIONS: In the last years, several technological devices for living independently and fostering social health and social participation in people with dementia have been developed. However, specific outcome measures to assess social health and social participation are needed. Even though the analysed studies provided some evidence-base for the use of technology in this field, there is an urge to develop high quality studies and specific outcome measures