Technology use highly accepted by caregivers, those with AD-related agitation

Key takeaways:

• A study examined 26 individuals with agitation in Alzheimer’s and their caregivers for acceptability of technology use.
• Technology use was found to be highly acceptable across four metrics.

Technology was found to be both easy to use and highly acceptable in a cohort of those with Alzheimer’s-related agitation and their caregivers, according to a poster presentation at CTAD.

“The ability of mobile technologies and wearables to passively and continuously collect data holds much potential to improve the quality and efficiency of clinical research studies,” Hamid R. Okhravi, MD, associate professor of internal medicine at the Glennan Center for Geriatrics at Eastern Virginia Medical School and colleagues wrote. “However, they pose technological challenges to participants and their caregivers.”

Okhravi and colleagues examined the acceptability of technology utilization (wearables, electronic form data completion and submission, sleep and real time agitation episode collection) in those exhibiting agitation in Alzheimer’s disease as well as their caregivers.

Their study included 26 participants aged 56 to 88 years (61.54% female), who recorded Mini-Mental State Exam (MMSE) scores of five to 28. Enrollees underwent baseline assessment with Zarit Burden Interview (ZBI), Cohen-Mansfield Agitation Index (CMAI) and Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) tests. At week 16, caregivers filled out a questionnaire assessing their experiences with four main technological aspects (setup, maintenance, troubleshooting, technology experience) for the study duration. Researchers also examined the impact of patients’ neuropsychiatric symptoms, cognition, caregiver burden and demographic factors on ease of using technology, analyzing correlations between baseline CMAI, NPI, ZBI, MMSE scores, age and education on the aforementioned technology aspects with Pearson correlation coefficients.

Data showed overall acceptability for all technological aspects, with mean scores (on a scale of one to five, with five indicating highest ease) of four for technology setup, 4.1 for technology maintenance and 3.5 for technology troubleshooting and user experience. The overall mean score across all participants and all four technology aspects was 3.8.

The researchers also found very low (<0.25) correlation between baseline assessment scores and caregivers’ experiences with technology.

“There is no correlation between the level of patients’ cognitive status, caregivers’ burden or their age and education with level of technology burden,” Okhravi and colleagues wrote.