Introduction: Informal caregiving is an essential element of health-care delivery. Little data describes how caregivers structure care recipients' lives and impact their functional status.
Methods: We performed observational studies of community dwelling persons with dementia (PWD) to measure functional status by simultaneous assessment of physical activity (PA) and lifespace (LS). We present data from two caregiver/care-recipient dyads representing higher and average degrees of caregiver involvement.
Results: We acquired >42,800 (subject 1); >41,300 (subject 2) PA data points and >154,500 (subject 1); >119,700 (subject 2) LS data points over 15 months of near continuous observation. PA and LS patterns provided insights into the caregiver's role in structuring the PWD's day-to-day function and change in function over time.
Discussion: We show that device-enabled functional monitoring (FM) can successfully gather and display data at resolutions required for dementia care studies. Objective quantification of individual caregiver/care-recipient dyads provides opportunities to implement patient-centered care.
Keywords: Alzheimer's disease; caregiver; dementia; dyad; functional status; lifespace; n‐of‐1 trial; physical activity; smartphone; smartwatch.
© 2020 The Authors. Alzheimer's & Dementia: Translational Research & Clinical Interventions published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Alzheimer's Association.