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September 29, 2014 - Health-eBrain Study Phase I: Impact of Caregiving on Caregivers

The IRB-approved Health-eBrain Study launched September 29, 2014 at the REACT/AARP conference with our partners under the 21st Century BrainTrust®, studied the impact of the toll of caregiving on caregivers.

The long-term goal of this technology-driven health optimization research initiative is to provide the individual caregiver with self-assessment tools to longitudinally track their health in order to:

  • Support and validate the need for healthy, proactive caregivers for the recruitment and success of participation in clinical trials
  • Recruit and engage caregivers as clinical research partners/surrogates for patient-reported outcomes through the use of mobile applications for longitudinal data collection
  • Trigger earlier engagements with and interventions by the clinician community around early diagnosis of MCI

In the three months following launch, over two-thirds of the 1,000 participants completed the survey and took the brain performance test.  This level of response validated the potential of virtual cohorts (recruitment/cost-savings) for future clinical trial design.  Final analysis of the data sets offered striking results. In the study survey, caregivers report themselves as coping well, while the brain performance tests showed that 57% were operating at less than 50% cognitive vitality.

This demonstration research supports mobile platforms developed to assess depression, stress levels, self-care activities, adherence to medications, and passive biometric tracking of vital signs.