Research Team at IUPUI Develops Social App to Support Alzheimer's

Newswise, March 28, 2016— Every day, more than 15 million unpaid caregivers provide care to people with Alzheimer’s disease, with little outside support and often at the risk of their own health.

Now a team of researchers, including David Wilkerson at the Indiana University School of Social Work at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, will use an innovation grant awarded by the Regenstrief Institute to see whether a social microvolunteering app developed for Facebook could help provide support many caregivers are now lacking.

The team, which also includes Dr. Daniel Bateman, a gerontology psychiatrist with the IU School of Medicine and Erin Brady, a faculty member at the School of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI, hope to have an answer to that question by early fall.

The three met through their participation in the Sandra Eskenazi Center for Brain Innovation eHealth group and decided to join forces to explore the possibility that their social microvolunteering application could aid caregivers.

The social microvolunteering app communicates with a Facebook community and can push and retrieve information to and from the entire community or only selected groups within the community.

Social microvolunteering is a simple and brief form of volunteer service usually done virtually through social networks and requiring no long-term time commitment.

It connects an individual with a question to a group of potential answerers, leveraging the social networks of a core group of supporters to expand the scale of answerers available and increase the speed of responses.

Brady developed and researched the social microvolunteering idea in an application for people with limited vision. Bateman will help the team understand the needs of caregivers.

Wilkerson's interest has to do with patient-centered care and creating a holistic care environment that includes caregivers and strengthens the resource of caregiving.

If the research project shows the application is effective, it could prove to be an inexpensive way to provide support to millions of caregivers.

The numbers of unpaid caregivers trying to maintain their own lives and care for loved ones with Alzheimer's disease is staggering. In 2014, 15.7 million unpaid caregivers took care of people with Alzheimer's disease, providing a total of 17.9 billion hours of care, according to the Alzheimer's Association.

Providing care comes with its own problems. Experts say caregivers have higher rates of depression, anxiety, insomnia, cardiovascular disease and health care resource use, making caregiver self-management an important target for intervention, according to research studies.

Wilkerson said the team will be investigating small groups of five to eight caregivers; each group will have a Facebook account.

The group will be asked what informational and emotional support questions it would like to get answered in alternating weeks of the research. This aspect of group discussion is anticipated to be a first step in the development of mutual support and will generate questions that will be pushed to the larger Facebook community for the purposes of social microvolunteering.

The social microvolunteering app retrieves their answers, and relevant answers are sent back to the caregiver group for deliberation. The online caregivers' group will discuss online which answers seem the most relevant and then take action. Wilkerson said the caregivers would give authorization through their Facebook page to use the application for the test period.

The team expects to recruit 24 to 26 people, who will be divided up into four groups by April, and then start the project in May

"If our intervention can increase support, it can potentially improve caregiver health and, in conjunction with primary health care interventions, extend the amount of time that people with Alzheimer's can remain at home," Wilkinson noted.

Using a Computer, Social Activities Tied to Reduced Risk of Memory Decline

Newswise, March 18, 2016– Keeping the brain active with social activities and using a computer may help older adults reduce their risk of developing memory and thinking problems, according to a study released today that will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 68th Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada, April 15 to 21, 2016.

“The results show the importance of keeping the mind active as we age,” said study author Janina Krell-Roesch, PhD, with the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz., and member of the American Academy of Neurology. “While this study only shows association, not cause and effect, as people age, they may want to consider participating in activities like these because they may keep a mind healthier, longer.”

For the study, researchers followed 1,929 people, age 70 and older, who were part of the larger Mayo Clinic Study of Aging in Rochester, Minn. The participants had normal memory and thinking abilities at recruitment to the study. They were then followed for an average of four years until they developed mild cognitive impairment or remained impairment-free.

Participants were asked about their engagement in mentally stimulating activities such as computer use, reading, crafting and social activities within 12 months before participation in the study using a questionnaire.

The investigators then wanted to know if participants who engaged in mental activities at least once per week had a lower risk for new onset of mild cognitive impairment as compared to those participants who did not engage in these activities.

The study found that people who used a computer once per week or more were 42 percent less likely to develop memory and thinking problems than those who did not. A total of 193 out of 1,077 people (17.9 percent) in the computer use group developed mild cognitive impairment, compared to 263 out of 852 (30.9 percent) people in the group that did not report computer use.

People who engaged in social activities were 23 percent less likely to develop memory problems than those who did not engage in social activities. A total of 154 out of 767 (20.1 percent) people in the social activities group developed problems, compared to 302 out of 1,162 (26.0 percent) people who did not participate in social activities.

People who reported reading magazines were 30 percent less likely to develop memory problems. Those who engaged in craft activities such as knitting were 16 percent less likely to develop memory problems. Similarly, those who played games were 14 percent less likely to develop memory problems.

The study was supported by the National Institute on Aging, National Institute of Mental Health, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Robert H. and Clarice Smith and Abigail Van Buren Alzheimer’s Disease Research Program, the European Regional Development Fund and the Arizona Alzheimer’s Consortium.

Learn more about memory and thinking problems at www.aan.com/patients.

The American Academy of Neurology, an association of 30,000 neurologists and neuroscience professionals, is dedicated to promoting the highest quality patient-centered neurologic care. A neurologist is a doctor with specialized training in diagnosing, treating and managing disorders of the brain and nervous system such as Alzheimer’s disease, stroke, migraine, multiple sclerosis, brain injury, Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy.

Popular Blood Pressure App Misses the Mark

Study in 85 volunteers found highly inaccurate measurements and showcases weakness of unregulated mobile health applications, researchers say

Newswise, March 3, 2016 — A popular smartphone app purported to accurately measure blood pressure simply by placing a cellphone on the chest with a finger over the built-in camera lens misses high blood pressure in eight out of 10 patients, potentially putting users’ health at risk, according to research from Johns Hopkins.

Although the app, called Instant Blood Pressure, is no longer available for purchase, it was downloaded more than 100,000 times and is still functional on phones, the researchers say.

“We think there is definitely a role for smartphone technology in health care, but because of the significant risk of harm to users who get inaccurate information, the results of our study speak to the need for scientific validation and regulation of these apps before they reach consumers,” says Timothy B. Plante, M.D., a fellow in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

The study, described at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Lifestyle meeting and concurrently online March 2 in JAMA Internal Medicine, was conducted by Plante and Seth Martin, M.D., M.H.S., an assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Blood pressure is best measured, the researchers say, using the well-established technique of inflating a cuff attached around the brachial artery in the arm to detect the force of blood flowing when the heart is beating and at rest. Either a trained medical professional or a machine “listens” to sounds from the brachial artery as blood flows under variable pressure from the cuff.

Plante and Martin undertook the study because “we were skeptical that even very talented people could design an app that could accurately measure blood pressure in such a different way,” Martin says. “Because of the absence of any rigorous scientific testing, there was no evidence that it worked or didn’t work.”

To conduct such testing, Martin, Plante and colleagues recruited 85 adult volunteers among patients and staff members in clinics associated with Johns Hopkins Medicine. The participants self-reported a range of body mass measurements, races and ethnicities, all factors known to influence blood pressure.

Each participant had his or her resting blood pressure measured twice using a reliable automated blood pressure monitor commonly used in research studies to avoid measurer variation or error. Participants also used the app to measure their own blood pressure twice on the same day.

Results showed that blood pressures measurements from the app were overwhelmingly inaccurate. Close to 80 percent of those with clinically high blood pressure, defined as 140/90 millimeters of mercury or above, measured by the automated blood pressure monitor showed normal blood pressure with the app.

The authors say that it is unclear how the app arrives at a blood pressure number. They suggest in the study that, rather than attempting to measure true blood pressure, the app gives a population-derived estimate based on the user’s age, sex, height, weight and heart rate, the latter of which could be detected by the phone’s microphone.

“Because this app does such a terrible job measuring blood pressure,” says Plante, “it could lead to irreparable harm by masking the true risk of heart attacks and strokes in people who rely on the accuracy of this information.”

Martin and Plante note that mobile health smartphone applications are becoming more commonplace, and many have the potential to greatly improve health by putting personalized medical resources and information literally in the hands of patients through cellphones.

Though the results of this study were discouraging, they say improvements in the technology could make blood pressure measurement apps accurate and useful. The app studied here, which cost $4.99 when it was sold, was removed from Apple’s App Store in late August 2015 for reasons that are unclear.

“The next big step in health care is to further engage folks in their own care and motivate them to reduce risks associated with diseases like high blood pressure,” Plante says. “But care must be taken to make sure they get the accurate ways to do that.”

Other researchers who participated in this study include Bruno Urrea, M.D.; Roger S. Blumenthal, M.D.; Edgar R. Miller III, M.D., Ph.D.; and Lawrence J. Appel, M.D., M.P.H., all of Johns Hopkins, and Zane T. MacFarlane, of Pomona College.

The work was funded by the PJ Schafer Cardiovascular Research Fund.