STAlz: Remotely supporting the diagnosis, tracking and rehabilitation of patients with Alzheimer's

Abstract

As the World's population gets older, diseases directly related to aging are increasingly becoming the focus of technological effort and research. Dementia, in general, and Alzheimer's disease (AD), in particular, is one of the most common afflictions among elderly people, with studies predicting an even bigger incidence in the next decades. Due to mobility constraints, patients are being inadequately followed by their medical staff, hindering an effective delay of the disease's progression through preventive therapeutics. As such, new ways of diagnosing, tracking and rehabilitating AD patients are needed. This paper presents STAlz, a mobile device based system developed to provide caregivers and medical professionals a way to be in contact and share important information, and to provide patients with a tool that could potentiate the exercise of their cognitive functions. This system was tested with Alzheimer's disease caregivers and the initial results proved promising. © 2013 IEEE.