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P4‐630: USE OF A HYBRID FACE ROBOT IN DEMENTIA CARE: UNDERSTANDING FEASIBILITY IN INDIA
Author(s) -
Natarajan Nirupama,
Vaitheswaran Sridhar,
De Lima Maria Raposo,
Wairagkar Maitreyee,
Vaidyanathan Ravi
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
alzheimer's and dementia
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 6.713
H-Index - 118
eISSN - 1552-5279
pISSN - 1552-5260
DOI - 10.1016/j.jalz.2019.08.179
Subject(s) - dementia , intervention (counseling) , population , gerontology , health care , robot , medicine , population ageing , psychology , nursing , artificial intelligence , computer science , political science , environmental health , disease , pathology , law
Background: In 2006, dementiaguide.com launched Symptom Guide , an online web-based tool that allowed caregivers/users to identify and track dementia-related symptoms that were most important to them. Now, we have transitioned the web-based dementia tracking platform into a mobile application. We redesigned the original text-heavy interface to create a more intuitive mobile health tool utilizing sound human-centred design principles. With this analysis, our objective was to compare demographic characteristics and patterns of symptom tracking in SymptomGuide web and early app users.Methods: Datawere exported from the SymptomGuide database on 2019-03-26. Differences between continuous variables were tested by independent samples t-test or Wilcoxon rank-sum test, and categorical comparisons were made by Pearson’s chi-squared test or Fisher’s exact test. Differences were considered significant for p<0.05, with Bonferroni corrections for multiple comparisons. Results: Theweb data consisted of 11291 users, with usage spanning 12 years, whereas 478 used the app over its first 8months. Patient age was similar in web and app users: 73.7613.5 vs 74.9612.3 years (p1⁄40.08). By contrast, caregivers who used the web version were older than those who used the app (p<0.001; e.g. 46.4% vs 34.3% caregivers aged 55+ years). Interestingly, web user patients were significantly more likely to be female than those on the app (64.3% vs 59.2%; p<0.05). Of all users, 3586 on the web (31.8%) and 326 app (68.2%) created baseline symptom profiles. The median number of symptoms tracked at baseline was 4 on both platforms. There were, however, differences in which symptoms each group chose to track. App users weremore likely to track symptoms related to Behaviour and Personality Changes, while web users were more likely to track those related to Everyday Activities and Physical Changes. In terms of longitudinal usage, app users were more likely to continue tracking their symptoms past baseline compared to web users (15.5% vs 11.9% of users; p1⁄40.07). Conclusions: Despite only being launched recently, these preliminary analyses reveal that more app users are creating symptom profiles and tracking their progression longitudinally. This indicates that the platform redesign into a more intuitive and accessible tool has improved user engagement.