Digital Testing in Alzheimer’s Disease: Going Beyond the Pencil Test
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The growing number of clinical trials and increasing number of drugs in the pipeline are reasons for optimism in the quest for new treatments for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). At the same time, there are concerns that many of the clinical assessments used to evaluate cognition are no longer fit for purpose.
Alzheimer’s researcher Jeffrey Cummings, MD, a neurologist and research professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, notes, “The assessments often date from the 1970s and 1980s, when we had a much less thorough understanding of early disease presentation.” Digital testing offers a solution.
In a new episode of a Pearson-sponsored podcast series, “The Progress Profile: Alzheimer’s Research in Focus,” Cummings joined moderator John Harrison, Ph.D., CPsychol, CSci, AFBPsS, an associate professor at Alzheimercentrum, AUmc, Amsterdam, to share his thoughts on the role of digital testing in Alzheimer’s disease.
Diving Into Digital
Scaling up with digital testing is easier and can be more convenient than paper-and-pencil tests. Computerized testing, smartphone monitoring, and speech analysis not only make remote assessment possible but also ease the process of synthesizing behavioral data for more meaningful end points.
Furthermore, Cummings shared that digital tests are often more precise and reproducible, create less variability between sites, and are accessible when raters are unavailable. Digital assessments for AD could also contribute to a better understanding of the brain and can benefit patients worried about their cognition or memory.
“For those individuals, we should be able to direct them to online assessments with a readout that would be informative for them or would establish a baseline from which they could continue to measure their performance,” he explained. “A test that is … presented electronically, and the response is electronically captured, [is one of the] many advantages to digitized tests.”
Cummings also shared his thoughts on the growth of digital testing to better understand the brain and drive patient-centered drug development.
The Future of Digital
While there have been significant advances in digital assessments in AD, there are still opportunities to expand the use of these tools. Cummings shared that clinical trials do use some digital biomarkers that make trials more patient-friendly and can contribute to the development of new drugs, but it’s still a developing area of research.
“I think we have a lot of hurdles to jump before we finally get to the place we want to be in integrating the new biomarkers into the health care system,” he says.
Listen to the episode, “Signals of Hope: Science, Progress, and What’s Next,” to hear Cummings share additional thoughts on digital testing, advances in drug development, and the role research plays in delivering tools to diagnose and treat patients.
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