Background: Progressive cognitive deficits are the main clinical symptom of Alzheimer's disease; however, the precise recording of cognitive deficits and assessment of their progression pose major problems in patient care and early interventions.
Objective: Which problems for care and early intervention result from the current practice of cognitive assessment of patients with memory problems and which opportunities arise from the use of mobile apps?
Material and methods: Evaluation of current care structures, discussion of basic work, expert recommendations and current developments.
Results: The current practice of the pencil and paper-based diagnostics of cognitive deficits, which is temporally and spatially bound to a clinical environment, constrains the feasibility, validity and reliability of cognitive assessment and the quantification of progression. This limits the meaningful use of further diagnostic measures, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) analyses. Recent progress in mobile app-based technologies, illustrated here with the example of the neotiv app, can help to overcome these problems.
Conclusion: Mobile app-based technologies can help to improve the cognitive assessment of patients with the main symptom of memory complaints. They can reduce overuse and underuse of diagnostic and therapeutic pathways and enable a targeted and meaningful use of advanced diagnostics. In addition, they can structure risk-modifying preventive measures, identify iatrogenic impairment of cognition and in this respect also strengthen patient competence.
Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease; Cognition; Mild cognitive impairment; Mobile apps; Neuropsychology.