Electronic devices for cognitive screening.

What is it about?

Objectives: The reduction in cognitive decline depends on timely diagnosis. The aim of this systematic review was to analyze the current available Information and Communication Technologies´ (ICT) based instruments for cognitive decline early screening and detection in terms of usability, validity and reliability. Methods: Electronic searches identified 1785 articles of which 34 met the inclusion criteria and were grouped according to their main purpose into test batteries, measures of isolated tasks, behavioral measures and diagnostic tools. Results: Thirty one instruments were analyzed. Fifty two percent were PC based, 26% Tablet, 13% laptop and one was mobile phone based. The most common input method was touchscreen (48%). The instruments were validated with a total of 4307 participants: 2146 were healthy older adults (M = 73.59, SD = 5.12); 1104 had dementia (M = 74.65, SD = 3.98) and 1057 mild cognitive impairment (M = 74.84, SD = 4.46). Only 6% were administered at home, 1719% reported outcomes about usability and 22% about understandability. One study reported users’ experience. Twenty-three percent of the instruments included information about convergent validity and 34% about discriminant validity; most of them obtained acceptable values of specificity and senisitivity. The methodological quality of the studies was good, the weakest methodological area being usability. Most of the instruments obtained acceptable values of specificity and sensitivity.

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Why is it important?

Conclusions: It is necessary to create home delivered instruments and to include usability and users´ experience studies in their design. Involvement of people with cognitive decline in all phases of the development process is of great importance to obtain valuable and user-friendly products. I

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