Awardee Organization(s): University of Pennsylvania
Principal Investigator(s): Kyra O’Brien, MD, MSHP
Official Project Title: WATCH (warning assessment and alerting tool for cognitive health)
AITC Partner: PennAITech
Website(s): https://www.med.upenn.edu/kbjohnsonlab/
Early detection of cognitive impairment, including dementia, is beneficial for patients and their families because it helps them access needed care supports. Screenings for many health conditions are done in primary care, but it is difficult to do screenings for cognitive impairment in this setting. This is because the time required to do a cognitive screen can be challenging to fit into a typical primary care appointment. The goal of this project is to make it easier for primary care providers to detect early signs of cognitive impairment in real-time. We aim to develop a prediction model that uses data from the electronic health record (EHR) and video and audio from the primary care visit to estimate a patient’s risk of having undetected cognitive impairment. We will build off an existing cognitive impairment prediction model called the EHR Risk of Alzheimer’s and Dementia Assessment Rule (eRADAR). We will use this model to recruit Penn Medicine primary care patients to participate in a recorded research visit, where we will conduct a cognitive and physical exam. Video and audio data from these visits will be combined with the EHR data to generate new predictive models. We aim to see if the addition of video and audio data to the prediction model improves detection of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. This will build the basis for future work aiming to integrate the new predictive model into primary care clinics and test its effectiveness in promoting early detection of cognitive impairment.
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