The smartphone in the memory clinic: A study of patient and care partner’s utilisation habits

ABSTRACT

Smartphones have potential as cognitive aids for adults with cognitive impairments. However, little is known about how patients and their care partners utilise smartphones in their day-to-day lives. We collected self-reported smartphone utilisation data from patients referred for neuropsychological evaluations (N = 53), their care partners (N = 44), and an Amazon Mechanical Turk control sample (N = 204). Patient participants were less likely to own a smartphone than controls, with increasing age associated with less utilisation of smartphone features in all groups. Of the patients who owned smartphones, spontaneous use of cognitive aid features (e.g., reminders and calendars) occurred on only a monthly-to-weekly basis; by comparison, patients reported utilising social/general features (e.g., email and internet) on a weekly-to-daily basis. Individuals referred for geriatric cognitive disorder evaluations were less likely to own and use smartphones than individuals referred for other reasons. Care partners reported using their smartphones more frequently than control group adults, with 55% of care partners endorsing utilising their device in caring for the patient. Building upon existing smartphone use habits to increase the use of cognitive aid features may be a feasible intervention for some patients, and including care partners in such interventions is encouraged.

KEYWORDS:

• Technology
• Smartphone
• Memory aid
• Dementia
• Aging

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Larry Rosen for his generous sharing of item-level data from his 2013 survey study, and to Stacy Nguyen, Chenlu Gao, and Mary High for assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported in part by National Institutes of Health R21AG053161, internal research support from the Plummer Movement Disorders Center, Temple, TX to J.F.B., and by internal research support from the Baylor University Research Committee and the Vice Provost for Research to M.K.S.