果冻影院

The Mindset4Dementia app, made available on the App Store this month, asks users a series of questions around age, health and lifestyle, before getting them to complete a series of playful cognitive exercises.

The games harness NHS guidelines and mirror the dementia screening process, looking at short and long-term memory, concentration and attention span, language and communication skills and awareness of time and place (orientation).

Mindset4Dementia screens for neurological anomalies and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately flag clinically relevant findings. At the moment users are not diagnosed but the data collected, combined with the AI capability, is enabling the researchers to evolve the app into a next generation dementia screening tool, which could be used to diagnose patients in their own home.听

Hamzah Selim, a 4^th year 果冻影院 medical student, conceived the idea for a dementia screening app in 2018 and has since built a multi-disciplinary team of students and scientists, with expertise in coding, clinical medicine and neuroscience.

After two years鈥� development, and with support from 果冻影院, 果冻影院 Innovation & Enterprise and Imperial College London, the Mindset4Dementia app has now been made freely available. After just a few days it ranked as the 5^th most popular medical app on the App Store.

Hamzah said: 鈥淐ompassion is built throughout the app; it is designed be pleasurable to use with relaxing colour schemes, easy to use buttons, jokes and emojis 鈥� putting patients at ease - just as a doctor would.

鈥淗owever, we have ensured the data we are gathering is scientifically robust. Each person who uses the Mindset4Dementia app is generating lots of exciting clinical data, which can听then teach an AI how the brain works, making it better at noticing when something isn鈥檛 quite right.

鈥淔or example, a common sign of dementia is a lack of vertical eye movement, which is practically assessed by having the patient follow a doctor鈥檚 finger.

鈥淢indset4Dementia animates an object for the patient to track and leverages Apple鈥檚 ARKit technology to quantify the user鈥檚 eye movement, mimicking a robust clinical analysis. By directly assessing a range of symptoms, our technology goes beyond competitor solutions who rely on self-reported symptoms.鈥澨�

Approximately 209,600 people will develop dementia this year, which equates to one every three minutes. There are currently around 850,000 people with dementia in the UK and this figure is projected to rise to 1.6 million by 2040.

However, dementia is hard to detect with 62% of those living with the condition existing undiagnosed. COVID-19 has exacerbated the issue of dementia going undetected or sufferers not receiving the clinical care and support they need.

Hamzah added: 鈥淎t 果冻影院 we learn about patient-teaching, which highlights the importance of being highly transparent and听having听clear communication with patients.听

鈥淚 took what I鈥檇 learnt about explaining procedures to patients, and integrated them into Mindset4Dementia ensuring the information was easy to understand and clearly laid out. Taking time to develop the app and being guided by patient-teaching has been critical for its success.鈥�

Snapchat inspiration

The concept of Mindset4Dementia came to Hamzah whilst sending a Snapchat. He was learning about eye-movements during his neuroscience research year and听the diagnostics behind when a doctor says, 鈥渇ollow my finger with your eye鈥�. He realised whilst moving the dog filter around that听while听Snapchat听could听leverage technology to track eye-movements, healthcare didn't yet have that ability. Establishing that existing technology could听be applied to healthcare to听make care more accessible and accurate, he embarked on a BSc to try to put neurological care in the palm of everyone鈥檚 hand.

Data collection aiding research

Built on a simple 1, 2, 3 principle of Analyse, Build and Care, the Mindset4Dementia user is contributing vital data on how a healthy brain should look. This teaches the app鈥檚 AI to differentiate between healthy and abnormal presentations and Mindset4Dementia can then be used to screen and help millions of undiagnosed individuals. The data collected will look at trends and collect epidemiological information. The ambition is to then pass this information on to other healthcare institutions to improve dementia research as well as have the app fully incorporated into the听NHS.

Links

• 果冻影院 Medical School
• Innovation & Enterprise

Image

• Credit: Mindset4Dementia

Media contacts

Kate Clark

E: kate.clark听[at] ucl.ac.uk

Henry Killworth

Tel: +44 (0) 7881 833274

E: h.killworth [at] ucl.ac.uk