Electronic Reminding Technology Following Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

To determine whether automated reminders from 2 contemporary personal digital assistant (PDA) devices produce higher rates of timely task completion in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Outpatient and community rehabilitation settings. Thirty-six adults aged 18 to 66 years with TBI and self-determined complaints of memory impairment. Timely completion rates for assigned memory tasks under 4 randomly assigned memory aid conditions. Significantly, higher completion rates were found when using either PDA device when compared with a combined baseline and paper memory aid condition (for Palm OS device, Incidence Rate Ratio [IRR] = 2.14, P < .0005, CI [confidence interval] = 1.77-2.59; for Microsoft Pocket PC OS device, IRR = 1.47, P < .001, CI = 1.18-1.82). A significant difference in completion rates was also found between the 2 PDA devices (IRR = 1.46, P < .0005, CI = 1.26-1.70), with the Palm version producing the better scores. Substantially higher rates of task completion (more than double in some cases) when using either PDA device suggest that rehabilitation clinicians can make productive use of PDA-based memory aids in their TBI patient populations. The strength of the effects of PDA device usage argues for further investigation of the impact of device usage on quality-of-life and costs of care, and of personal and caregiver factors predictive of successful and sustained device usage.