The number of Americans living with Alzheimers Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) is estimated to double to 13.8 million people by 2050, with minoritized individuals affected disproportionately. Cognitive, physical, and social activities can improve quality of life, cognition, and behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD), but access, engagement, and adherence are challenging. ADRD specialists are expensive and inaccessible for daily support, especially for persons living with dementia (PL WD) from minoritized backgrounds who cannot find culturally competent providers. Support groups do not provide scalable, individualized, evidence-based skills or daily guidance, and caregivers are already overburdened assisting with activities of daily living. Commercial solutions to support PLWD are not culturally responsive or scalable for daily, affordable use. There is an increasingly unmet need for culturally relevant, accessible, and scalable ADRD care. We are developing a personalized and culturally responsive virtual coaching platform to engage and support PLWD in evidence-based cognitive and physical activities in order to enhance health and well-being. Our novel technology leverages advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to facilitate activities from peer-reviewed interventions at lower costs. In each session, an avatar is used to guide and support the PLWD through evidence-based cognitive and physical activities. To engage PLWD, our NLP-based system adapts the coachs dialogue based on input shared by the PLWD and their family on key aspects of the PLWD's life history and culture (e.g., favorite holidays, music genres, foods). The avatar coach also has characteristics tailored to the PLWDs preferences (e.g., race/ethnicity, gender, age) and offers social support to encourage adherence with check-ins, praise, and motivational words. Our user interface is designed for PLWD to easily speak to and see their personal virtual coach on a large-screen device with a microphone and camera (e.g., iPad, computer). In Phase 1, we will develop a personalized and culturally responsive virtual coach prototype that delivers evidence-based cognitive and physical activities and test initial usability/feasibility for racially and ethnically diverse persons with mild ADRD and their caregivers. By digitizing activities and increasing personal and cultural relevance, the coaching platform will support PLWD and their caregivers by improving access, engagement, and adherence to evidence-based interventions to enhance health and well-being.
Public Health Relevance Statement: Project Narrative The number of people living with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias (ADRD) in the U.S. is expected to double to 13.8 million by 2050, with minoritized individuals disproportionately affected. This project aims to develop a personalized and culturally responsive virtual coaching platform to engage persons with mild ADRD in evidence-based cognitive and physical activities. By digitizing activities and increasing personal and cultural relevance, the platform will support PLWD and their caregivers by improving access, engagement, and adherence to evidence-based interventions to enhance health and well-being.
Project Terms: Activities of everyday life; daily living function; daily living functionality; functional ability; functional capacity; Activities of Daily Living; Affect; ages; Age; advanced age; elders; geriatric; late life; later life; older adult; older person; senior citizen; Elderly; AD dementia; Alzheimer Type Dementia; Alzheimer disease dementia; Alzheimer sclerosis; Alzheimer syndrome; Alzheimer's; Alzheimers Dementia; Primary Senile Degenerative Dementia; primary degenerative dementia; senile dementia of the Alzheimer type; Alzheimer's Disease; Appointment; Artificial Intelligence; AI system; Computer Reasoning; Machine Intelligence; Asian Americans; Behavioral Symptoms; Black race; Black; Cognition; Computers; Ethnic Population; Ethnic Group; Ethnic People; Ethnic individual; Ethnicity People; Ethnicity Population; ethnic subgroup; ethnicity group; Family; Female; Food; Foundations; Geriatric Psychiatry; Psychiatry for older adults; Psychiatry for older people; Psychiatry for seniors; Psychiatry for the elderly; Psychogeriatrics; geriatric psychology; geropsychiatry; geropsychology; geropsychopharmacology; Goals; Health; Hearing; Holidays; Human; Modern Man; Interview; Jordan; Language; male; Minority Groups; Minority People; Minority Population; Minority individual; Motivation; Music; Persons; Natural Language Processing; natural language understanding; Peer Review; Personal Satisfaction; well-being; wellbeing; Psychiatry; Psychology; Quality of life; QOL; Race; Races; racial; racial background; racial origin; Support Groups; Self-Help Groups; self help organization; Social support; social support network; Software Engineering; Computer Software Development; Computer Software Engineering; Speech; Testing; Time; Genetic Transcription; Gene Transcription; RNA Expression; Transcription; Travel; Visual Aid; Work; Asian; Gender; Care Givers; Caregivers; Specialist; Caring; improved; Phase; Physical activity; Individual; Ethnicity; Ethnic Origin; Robot; Life; System; Dementia; Amentia; preference; American; experience; speech recognition; life history; Structure; skills; Participant; cultural competence; culturally competent; new technology; novel technologies; Devices; Reporting; social; Positioning Attribute; Position; Code; Coding System; Modeling; response; Intervention; Intervention Strategies; interventional strategy; Accent; Provider; Adherence; Improve Access; Intake; Randomized; randomisation; randomization; randomly assigned; Cognitive; Characteristics; Modification; Text; Instruction; cost; designing; design; Minority; Evidence based intervention; usability; prototype; commercialization; evidence base; dementia care; ethnically diverse; ethnic diversity; racially diverse; racial diversity; online app; web application; web based app; web based application; web app; psychological symptom; efficacy study; recruit; remote care; remote healthcare; remote health care; Facebook; microphone; AD related dementia; ADRD; Alzheimer's and related dementias; Alzheimer's disease and related dementia; Alzheimer's disease and related disorders; Alzheimer's disease or a related dementia; Alzheimer's disease or a related disorder; Alzheimer's disease or related dementia; Alzheimer's disease related dementia; virtual coach; Latine; Latinx; racial population; Racial Group; racial subgroup; caregiver stress; care giver stress; Pacific Islander; verbal
