New app for dementia assessment
A team of Sydney and British clinicians have taken the paper based Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE-III) – one of the most commonly used screening tools for dementia – and translated it into app form for more accurate assessment and wider use within the clinical team.
A team of Sydney and British clinicians have taken the paper based Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination (ACE-III) – one of the most commonly used screening tools for dementia – and translated it into app form for more accurate assessment and wider use within the clinical team.
ACEmobile was launched at the Healthcare Innovation Expo 2013 in London last week and will be available in a few months. The developers intend ACEmobile to be made available free of charge to dementia clinicians around the world via iTunes and Google Play.
The development of ACEmobile has been a collaboration between Professor John Hodges (Neuroscience Research Australia), Dr Rupert Noad (Derriford Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust) and Dr Craig Newman (Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry). It has been supported by the National Institute for Health Research Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care in the South West Peninsula (PenCLAHRC).
ACEmobile has been developed by clinicians for clinicians. It provides a sensitive, reliable, secure and easy to administer dementia assessment tool that can be used by a wide range of medical and other healthcare staff.
The ACEmobile has been designed to ensure the assessment is “effortless” to administer. The administration instructions are embedded within the app, which means that the clinical team no longer needs to refer to a manual. This means it is much easier to accurately and reliably deliver the assessment with patients.
With reportedly “one tap” of a button the ACEmobile automatically scores and produces automated reports, making it easy for clinicians to obtain the information they need. It will also support the routine collection of data, which will be valuable for individual clinical teams to be able to audit their own dementia assessment practice.
The ACEmobile team hopes with a high level of accuracy, convenience and automation, assessments in dementia clinics will be easily carried out by all members of the team.
Dr Noad commented: “ACE-III is a great assessment tool, but as with many such tools which are paper based, it has been open to human error and miscalculation. By producing the ACEmobile app we have reduced the risk of such error and miscalculation and created a tool which can be used by the wider dementia care team.”
He added: “Early diagnosis is important because it allows us, along with the patient and those close to them, to prepare a plan of care which can mean greater independence and which can introduce therapies and strategies that may slow down the development of the disease.”
The ACEmobile will be available to download from iTunes and Google Play by June 2013. For more information or to register your interest, visit www.acemobile.org
