Digital Technology and Biomarker Core Realizing the limitations of conventional clinical assessments to precisely map change trajectories, our research community has increasingly applied methodologies that incorporate continuous, real-world and objective measurement of key features (e.g., mobility, cognition, sleep, higher order ADLs such as medication taking or driving) using the pervasive computing platform and methodologies of ORCATECH. This new approach has found important application in many areas of dementia research beyond early detection, such as gaining insight into caregiver-care recipient activities in monitored homes or providing a continuous record in institutional settings of agitation and related behaviors with objective digital biomarkers (DB) of sleep, physical activity and the environment. Use of these technologies is not limited to assessment, but may also deliver interventions, such as dementia care programs via home video appointments. Given the growing use and promise of DB and related technologies, this proposal will consolidate and substantially build upon recent advances by establishing an Oregon Alzheimer?s Disease Center Digital Technology and Biomarker Core. Accordingly, the Specific Aims of the proposed DTBC are: 1. To maintain and make available for research, an OADC dementia-specific focused Life Laboratory cohort of research volunteers (healthy controls, MCI, and those with AD) who will have deployed in their homes state-of-the-art sensing and pervasive computing platforms. The DTBC will maintain in each home an advanced research platform with an array of passive sensors (infrared, contact), fixed devices (electronic pillboxes, computers) and wearables (watches) which provides multifunction data (cognition, mobility, physiology, social engagement, experience sampling). The dementia-focused LL will be available to test new sensors or devices, as well a pilot new protocols using technology. 2. To obtain and make available for research, DB data on OADC subjects. The DTBC will store DB data in standard formats to be made available to both internal and external ADC research collaborators for brain aging and dementia studies, including: 1) unprocessed or minimally processed activity data; 2) weekly experienced sampled data (e.g., routine queries regarding mood, pain, medication changes). The DTBC will also facilitate the harmonization and storing for sharing (with investigator approval) relevant non- dementia- focused LL studies generating DB data. 3. To foster collaborative research involving DB and related technologies. The DTBC will maintain extensive interaction with all OADC cores to maximize the utilization of all core resources by facilitating the ability of researchers to study and integrate DBs markers in their investigations involving clinical, psychometric, genetic, fluid biomarkers, and pathological outcomes of our highly characterized center participants. The DTBC will also foster knowledge transfer via OADC and other ADC training opportunities.
Digital Technology and Biomarker Core The rapid growth in our aging population facing Alzheimer?s and related disorders will have an enormous impact on families and health care over the next few decades, requiring creative new approaches to ensure effective assessment, treatment and management of dementia. This proposal establishes a research core of experts providing home-based technologies (e.g., motion-activity sensors, watches, age-friendly computer interfaces) and related facilities to capture novel objective, continuous real-world data to dramatically improve day-to-day knowledge of the experience of dementia for persons with dementia and caregivers. The naturalistic home-based data will better inform clinical decisions regarding care management, and the efficacy of new treatments for dementia, as well as provide shared data and a model of digital assessment for a large number of collaborating researchers at other Alzheimer?s and related research centers.
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