ReMember-Me system: Developing a new, remote digital tool for detecting and preventing cognitive decline

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The COVID19 pandemic and social distancing measures imposed have intensified the need for tools allowing the remote and early assessment of cognitive decline, in order to prevent undiagnosed neurocognitive disorder cases among older adults. The goal of the ReMember-Me project (Image 1), funded by the EC and AAL Programme, is to create a remote, digital system for detecting, preventing and addressing cognitive decline early on. The first system prototype released includes the ReMember-Me Cognitive Assessment Scale (RMCAS), a new digital instrument to detect cognitive difficulties, as well as, measures of physical, psychoemotional and motor status, sleep quality and serious games. The RMCAS includes 19 tasks assessing orientation, verbal, visual and prospective memory, calculation, attention, executive function, language and abstract thinking. METHOD: The system is being, currently, pilot-tested with 14 healthy and cognitively fit older adults (M=74.50, SD=4.14, 77.8% females) in a pre-post intervention study. Participants completed a baseline assessment with the ReMember-Me system and other standardized tools and will be tested again after two months to explore any intervention effects. RESULT: The preliminary results showed that RMCAS has good fidelity and homogeneity (Table 1), individual items can yield results comparable to the Mini Mental State Examination (Table 2) while the digital administration of RMCAS did not seem to have any effect on performance compared to the traditional, hard copy administration (F=2.319, p>.05) CONCLUSION: The preliminary results of the study indicate that the RMCAS may be a promising new digital instrument for the remote assessment of cognitive decline. Further testing is planned with 350 people in total, including participants with neurocognitive disorder, in total, to draw more concrete conclusions regarding its validity and reliability.