If you know someone who might be suffering from dementia, it looks like there’s an app for that. As cheesy as that motto might sound, it the folks at Cambridge Cognition have put together an app dubbed CANTABmobile which helps doctors to detect the early stages of dementia in patients, thus allowing them to start treating them at the stage when it is the most beneficial. How the app works is that it provides patients with an easy to use memory test that will assess a patient’s short-term memory through a variety of challenges. Once the test has been completed, the app is then able to give doctors the results along with suggestions on how to best proceed.
So far based on the trials, it shows that the app is able to distinguish between normal age-related forgetfulness to dementia along with other treatable memory problems. However unlike the current method of testing which patients with higher academic qualifications are able to pass, the app is said to be more sensitive and can pick up on mild cognitive impairments which could be a precursor to dementia. No word on when the app will see wide-spread use, but more information on it can be found in the video above.