Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust has announced the completion of a multi-site study designed to test new wearable devices for the assessment of brain health and memory, with data from the study set to be shared this year.
The Cumulus Neuroscience CNS0-101 study sought to explore how technology can help monitor early stage dementia by evaluating the feasibility of “using repeated sampling of validated digital measures at home in patients with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, compared with healthy controls, over the course of 12 months”.
Through the study, participants were asked to regularly use an electroencephalography (EEG) headset device in order to measure their cognitive performance and brain waves during daily life, whilst logging onto the Cumulus Neuroassessment Platform app and performing tasks relating to working memory, episodic memory, executive function, decision making, language, and mood. Participants also wore a headband at night designed to record and monitor brain waves as they slept.
Data from the headsets and headbands was then uploaded onto the Cumulus Neuroassessment Platform, designed to support research into functional brain health and brain disorders by providing insights across five measurement domains: cognition, EEG, mood, language and sleep.
Shannon Diggin, clinical trial lead at Cumulus Neuroscience, comments that the CNS-101 sites “have played a vital role in delivering high quality data collection, and already we can see the evidence of this in the interim data which was presented recently at global Alzheimer’s disease conferences.”
Shannon highlighted that “more data readouts” from the study are expected to be shared this year and added: “Cumulus Neuroscience would like to thank our sites and our participants for helping us accelerate towards better measurement and deeper understanding of conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease.”
In other news around dementia care and digital health, in February HTN explored the dementia strategy for 2024-2026 from The Social Care and National Care Service Development Directorate within the Scottish Government, with digital highlighted as a key priority. Read more here.
We also previously covered how The University of Edinburgh joined NEURii, a global research collaborative which aims to explore the use of data and digital solutions to enhance approved treatment options for patients – is working to predict, prevent, manage and ultimately treat dementia.
