Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health problem that is radically transforming public and private healthcare organizations around the world, negatively affecting the rehabilitative treatments of non-COVID pathologies as well. In this situation, it becomes crucial to be able to guarantee the continuity of care also to all those patients with neurodegenerative diseases unable to reach healthcare services. Remote communication technologies are gaining momentum as potentially effective options to support health care interventions—including cognitive rehabilitation—while patients can stay safely at home. In this context, we are implementing HomeCoRe (i.e., Home Cognitive Rehabilitation software) in order to offer an innovative approach and a valid support for home-based cognitive rehabilitation in neurodegenerative diseases, such as mild cognitive impairment and early dementia. HomeCoRe has been developed within a research project between engineers and clinicians in order to obtain a usable and safe cognitive rehabilitation tool. This software has multiple advantages for patients and therapists over traditional approaches, as shown in its use in hospital settings. HomeCoRe could then represent an opportunity for accessing cognitive rehabilitation in all those situations where patients and therapists are not in the same location due to particular restrictions, such as COVID-19 pandemic.
Highlights
With the rise in life expectancy during the last decades, we are witnessing a steady increase in the number of older adults in the total population with a high risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases [1]
We reported that CoRe was safe and effective with respect to cognition in inpatients with Parkinson Disease-Mild Cognitive Impairment [68, 69] and in older adults with other forms of early cognitive impairment [70]
The World Health Organization (WHO) stresses taking global action against cognitive decline and dementia, encouraging governments worldwide to focus on prevention and to improve healthcare services
Summary
With the rise in life expectancy during the last decades, we are witnessing a steady increase in the number of older adults in the total population with a high risk of developing neurodegenerative diseases [1]. Further randomized controlled trials (RCT) are strongly needed to improve our knowledge of how to use home-based cognitive TR effectively to delay the progression of cognitive impairment in people with MCI and dementia This necessity is further supported by the fact that some concerns have slowed the integration of cognitive TR into clinical practice [29, 30], but the existing literature gives some recommendations to overcome them. As an urgent response to provide continuity of care and social connectedness during the COVID-19 pandemic, new alternative options of cognitive rehabilitation are needed To this end, remote communication technologies are increasingly considered as potentially effective options to support healthcare interventions, among which is cognitive rehabilitation, directly at the patient’s home, reducing risks of possible infections [44,45,46]. To the best of our knowledge, no experience has been published on the use of TR in older adults with cognitive impairment during COVID-19, even if strongly recommended [53,54,55]
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