Awardee Organization(s): BrainCheck Inc.
Principal Investigator(s): Bin Huang, PhD | Katherine Britt, PhD, RN
Official Project Title: AI-driven chatbot to navigate cognitive care plan for persons with AD/ADRD
AITC Partner: PennAITech
Website(s): https://braincheck.com
With the growing cost and care burn of Alzheimer’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease-related dementias (AD/ADRD), there is an urgent need to provide personalized care support to patients and their caregiver, thereby slowing disease progression, reducing expenses, and improving quality of life. Cognitive care planning (CCP) is a promising approach to systematically assess the needs of patients and caregivers and generate care plans with personalized recommendations to address neuropsychiatric/neurocognitive symptoms and functional limitations, and provide care resources. BrainCheck has developed a digital tool, BrainCheck (BC) Plan, to facilitate the integration of CCP into routine care. However, a lack of continuous support at home can make it difficult for patients and caregivers to follow through with care plans in daily life. To address this gap, we propose to develop a companion AI chatbot, BC Connect, that provides real-time, personalized assistance to patients and caregivers at home, helping them to navigate their care plans and answer questions as they arise. By leveraging a fine-tuned large language model alongside a knowledge base on dementia care, BC Connect will ensure to provide accurate and reliable information, mitigating the risk of misinformation common with AI systems. The study aims to: (1) identify common questions patients and caregivers face at home, (2) develop the BC Connect prototype, and (3) evaluate its usability and acceptability through real- world field testing. This innovation has the potential to improve the quality of care to persons with AD/ADRD while empowering families with the resources and ongoing support they need.
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