Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Aging
Date Submitted: Oct 29, 2024
Open Peer Review Period: Nov 21, 2024 - Jan 16, 2025
Date Accepted: Mar 18, 2025
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Perceptions of the use of mobile applications to assess memory in older adults with subjective and objective cognitive impairment: A focus group approach
ABSTRACT
Background:
Sleep-dependent memory is the phenomenon where newly obtained memory traces are consolidated from short-term memory stores to long-term memory, underpinning memory for daily life. Administering sleep-dependent memory tasks presents considerable challenges, particularly for older adults with memory concerns due to the need for sleep laboratories and research staff present to administer the task. In response, we have developed a prototype mobile application aimed at automating the data collection process.
Objective:
This study investigates the perspectives of older adults, both with and without cognitive impairment, regarding barriers and facilitators to using a new mobile application for at-home assessment of Sleep-Dependent Memory.
Methods:
Eleven participants aged over 50 were recruited from the Healthy Brain Ageing memory clinic, a specialised research memory clinic that focuses on the assessment and early intervention of cognitive decline. Two focus groups were conducted and thematically analysed using NVivo and the techniques described in Braun and Clarke (2006).
Results:
On average, participants were aged 68.5 (4/11 were male), eight participants had subjective cognitive impairment, and three participants had mild cognitive impairment. Two main themes emerged from the focus groups, shedding light on participants' use of mobile phones and the challenges and facilitators associated with transitioning from traditional laboratory-based assessments to home assessments. These challenges include maintaining accurate data, engaging with humans versus robots, and ensuring accessibility and task compliance. Additionally, potential solutions to these challenges were identified.
Conclusions:
Our findings underscore the importance of app flexibility in accommodating diverse user needs and preferences, as well as in overcoming barriers. While some individuals require high-level assistance, others express the ability to navigate the app independently with minimal support. In conclusion, older adults, regardless of cognitive status, express a desire for flexibility in mobile applications used for cognitive assessments.
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.