Development of oral healthcare application for improving recognition function to prevent elderly dementia

Abstract

Korea and Japan are the countries with more than 30% of the population aged 60 or over in 2019, and Korea is progressing its aging speed faster than Japan. Oral healthcare in the elderly is a fundamental component of the whole health and has a significant impact on the quality of life. Accordingly, there is an urgent interest and effort for improving oral healthcare and improving the quality of life for the elderly. Due to the lack of economic power and low education levels, the number of dental visits by the elderly has dropped significantly. Therefore, developing an application for oral healthcare for the elderly not only helps to keep oral healthcare on their own but also prevents dementia, thus reducing the social cost of dementia. This mobile application is based on the findings that it can activate the cognitive-behavioural function, prevent dementia, or slow the progression of dementia by strengthening chewing function and oral muscle function exercise of the elderly. This application is composed of a content utilization module and oral healthcare diagnostic module and used Android Jellybean 4.1, Android SDK, Cordova, Materialize CSS, Sublime Editor, Windows 10 for mobile application development.