Non-invasive smartphone use monitoring to assess cognitive impairment

Project Title:

Supervisor/s:

Giles Oatley, David Stratton, Sid Morris, Andrew Stranieri, Sally Firmin

Project Brief:

Current cognitive assessment tools require a level of involvement from the participant that makes them intrusive and difficult to repeat regularly. For example, the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), widely used to distinguish mild cognitive impairment from healthy ageing, requires participants to connect letters and numbers, draw a clock, draw a cube and recall words and numbers in sequence. MoCA takes many minutes to administer and repeated administration for assessments over time is challenging for health care professionals in many health care settings. This project explores alternate ways to assess cognition, with the suggestion that normal smartphone use can be associated with cognitive assessments. The hypothesis is that, as smartphones become more and more widely adopted, changes in the way a person's smartphone use changes would be a feasible indicator of cognitive ability.