Development of a Caregiver Application and AI-Enabled Intelligent Assistant to Support Families and Formal Care Providers in Caring for Persons with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias

PROJECT ABSTRACT Family caregivers face daunting challenges in caring for persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, there is no widely available mechanism to provide real-time, context sensitive support to informal AD caregivers that can address the specific care needs of each AD patient. To address this critical gap, we developed CareVirtue, an innovative web/mobile application for family caregivers that also assists formal care providers helping these families. During this Phase I project we will validate the CareVirtue web/mobile application as a method for caregivers to document daily care interactions with AD patients, and establish the utility of the generated data to develop predictive models for an intelligent caregiver assistant application. Looking ahead, our long term goal is to commercialize an AI-enabled intelligent caregiver assistant application that provides on demand, highly-relevant information about AD patients to care teams, which will ameliorate caregiver stress andamp; burden, reduce health care expenditures, and improve quality of care for both AD patients and their caregivers.PROJECT NARRATIVE Family caregivers face daunting challenges in caring for persons with Alzheimer’s disease. Currently, there is no widely available mechanism to provide real-time, context sensitive support to informal AD caregivers that can address the specific care needs of each AD patient. During this project we will perform usability and feasibility testing for the CareVirtue web/mobile application, and also develop initial predictive models for an AI-enabled intelligent caregiver assistant application. This intelligent caregiver assistant application will be validated in a larger Phase 2 trial.