Centre for Social Services Engineering
Centivizer: Technologies for Dementia
Centivizer: Technologies for Dementia
The Problem
The global dementia population is 50+ million in 2019 and will triple by 2050. According to the World Health Organization, dementia is the 5th leading cause of death. It also accelerates the process of cognitive decline in aging individuals. Dementia is a multifaceted syndrome that progressively affects a person’s cognitive abilities, behavior, and daily living activities. The symptoms include memory loss, thinking difficulties, and mood and behavior changes. With the progression of dementia, a person’s independence and everyday functioning significantly deteriorates, and serious behavioral problems begin to arise. The symptoms vary greatly in people with different types of dementia. The changes in people with dementia inevitably result in relationship strains and increased caregiving burden, taking a toll on family members and other caregivers. It was reported that caregivers typically need to spend 253 hours per month, equivalent to 2 full-time jobs, to care for an older adult with three or more self-care/mobility needs. In addition, caregivers are more likely to experience economic harm, physical health decline, emotional distress, and mental health issues. The global economic costs caused by dementia increased from US$279.6 billion in 2000 to US$946 billion in 2016.
Goal
The goal is to help seniors maintain cognitive health in order to contain the catastrophic impact of dementia on global social and economic systems.
Objectives
1. Develop serious games that can accurately assess a person’s cognitive functions.
2. Develop and commercialize applications that provide meaningful interactive activities in order to modify the behavior of subjects with dementia, without requiring the continuous involvement of caregivers.
3. Develop methods to train caregivers to effectively introduce interactive activities to those diagnosed with dementia or Alzheimer's disease.
Three Key Products
4VRYoung (pronounced as “Forever Young”)
4VRYoung (see Figure 1) is a unique project which engages the elderly in an interactive gamified exercise with little required supervision from caregivers. The seniors can enjoy a virtual biking experience in different places by hand or foot pedaling while listening to narration or music. If the player pedals faster, the video plays faster to reward the effort and motivate the player to keep pedaling. When the person stops pedaling the video stops and doesn’t start playing until the pedaling resumes. The advanced multiplayer mode enhances the social connection between individuals, who can compete or team up in a fun pedaling exercise. People can also have remote pedal competitions while video chatting. 4VRYoung includes the following components: six-button input device for choosing travel experiences/courses, 360-degree travel videos, different types of pedals (i.e. simple vs. elliptical), VR Goggles, and a large screen. 4VRYoung provides exploratory and engaging interactions that can be used independently and may reduce problem behaviors that stem from boredom, lack of social engagement, and rumination when the mind has nothing else to do. Through using this, families/caregivers can find a new way to connect with their loved ones and can encourage them to be more active.
Figure 1: A 4VRYoung Prototype
Project Lead: Mark Chignell
Contributors:
Postdoc
Brian Nejati
Industry Partners
Trevor Hall Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC)
Alumni
Tiffany Tong
Graduate Students
Henrique Matulis
Bella (Yigong) Zhang
Smiile (Thanyathorn) Thanapattheerakul
Max Haoyan Jiang
Lu Wang
Youzhi Hu
Kaustubh Shinde
Undergraduate Students
Scott Oxholm
Karen Zhao
Thomas Macdonald
Ryan Chang
Annie Gao
Sharon Ferguson
Rikin Gurditta
Bobby Graydon
Jia Lin Yuan
Ciel Faith Emond
Jessica Glusten
Atul Manmohan
Said Chehabeddine
Milestones
Centivizer: Version One
In cooperation with Keebee Play, we will test a prototype of the Long Term Care Centivizer in residential care facilities beginning Fall 2016.
In cooperation with Keebee Play, we will test a prototype of the Long Term Care Centivizer in residential care facilities beginning Fall 2016.
2RaceWithMe
2RaceWithMe (Figure 2) is a competitive pedaling product where people ride over video courses on a large curved screen. It engages the elderly in interactive exercise. The seniors can enjoy a virtual biking experience in different places by pedaling while listening to music. The advanced multiplayer mode enhances the social connection between individuals, where they can compete or team up. It differs from 4VRYoung in using a large curved screen, and in offering a collaborative pedaling experience and the chance to video conference with other people while pedaling. Thus, in addition to providing physical exercise and interesting video content, 2RaceWithMe is also designed to reduce social isolation by providing social interaction while people are exercising.
Figure 2: A 2RaceWithMe prototype
BrainTagger
BrainTagger (see Figure 3) addresses the problem of limited cognitive assessments for older adults through fun and engaging games and activities. It allows healthcare institutions and caregivers to effectively monitor, at low cost, cognitive decline caused by disease, lack of activation, etc. BrainTagger can be used as a screening tool for detecting abnormal declines in cognitive status such as delirium onset. BrainTagger currently has three main components: a tablet, a set of six easy-to-use input buttons, and a dashboard website. BrainTagger stimulates cognitive activities and monitors cognitive status in an unintrusive, enjoyable, and reliable way. It is a validated system which makes cognitive assessment engaging, inexpensive, and accessible everywhere.
Figure 3: A Senior Playing a BrainTagger Game.
Future Enhancements
● Conducting an fMRI Validation study at the University of Western Ontario
● Evaluating Reactivation outcomes at Humber River Hospital
● Using AI to make the games adaptable and to detect brain abnormality
● Developing more games to assess a full range of cognitive abilities
● Creating a downloadable researcher version to facilitate further validation and collection of normative data
Expected Outcomes
By designing engaging personalized activities, we hope to provide cognitive stimulation that will promote a 'state of calm' in the subject. We refer to these activities as "ambient augmentation" as they are placed in the person's residence and intended to augment and improve mood and cognition.
Knowledge Mobilization
Centivizer Inc. (founded in 2016) is a spin-off company from the Interactive Media Lab at the University of Toronto, led by Professor Mark Chignell from Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. We are a fast-growing interdisciplinary team of researchers, engineers, designers, software developers, and computer scientists. With the rapidly aging population in Canada and around the world, more and more healthcare and societal challenges are arising, and these challenges will increase in the next few decades. Our team of highly skilled professionals is diligently working towards utilizing the potential of technology to promote healthy and active aging.
The Centivizer system provides stimulating and rewarding activities intended to provide physical and cognitive exercises that match the interests and abilities of an older person. The system is a set of modules that contain single-board computers that are linked through a wireless application programming interface (API), allowing third-party developers to add their own modules to the system. This system is connected to a website dashboard for tracking and assessment of behaviour and performance. The Centivizer system has been user-tested at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute and a number of other locations. It is a promising way to provide older people with engaging activities.
Currently, we have three products: 2RaceWithMe, 4VRYoung (pronounced “Forever Young), and Braintagger. Our development team has been constantly improving our product offering, based on feedback from patients, caregivers, and healthcare professionals. We have already validated our serious games for cognitive assessment (Cognitive Centivizer) with over 200 elderly emergency patients showing that game performance has a significant correlation with popular clinical assessments such as the Mini-Mental State Examination, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, and the Confusion Assessment Method. We have also shown that the game for measuring executive function is most strongly related to the MMSE items that predict cognitive decline.
We have been collaborating with Toronto Public Library, Sunnybrook Hospital, Humber River Hospital, York Care Centre, the Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CABHI), and different research institutions in Canada, China, and Japan. We are looking for more partners to bring our Centivizer products to the people who need them. Together we can enable healthy and active aging for more seniors in Canada and beyond.
You can check out our website (www.centivizer.com) for more information. Please feel free to contact us If you have any questions. We look forward to hearing from you.
Project Partners
● AGE-WELL
● Ambient Activity Technology
● Centre for Aging and Brain Health Innovation (CABHI)
● Centre for Social Services Engineering
● Healthcare Insurance Reciprocal of Canada (HIROC)
● Humber River Hospital
● Interactive Media Lab, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering
● Mount Sinai Health Sciences
● University of Moncton
● York Care Centre