User Experience and Compliance Rates of Remote Monitoring Technologies in Alzheimer’s Disease: Preliminary Results of the RADAR‐AD Study

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundUnlike traditional pen‐and‐paper clinical assessments, remote monitoring technologies (RMTs) can assess participants’ function continuously and objectively during activities of daily living. Despite the potential of RMTs to assess function or assist early disease detection, there is skepticism that age or impairment may render participants unable or unwilling to comply with complex RMT protocols. The 8‐week RADAR‐AD study protocol asks Alzheimer’s disease (AD) patients in all disease stages to wear, amongst others, two activity trackers (Axivity, Fitbit), a wearable camera (Autographer), and use an active smartphone app (Mezurio), with a daily schedule totaling over 400 separate tasks and a parallel schedule for caregivers. This abstract presents preliminary compliance data and participant feedback.MethodWe included amyloid negative control participants (n=47) and amyloid positive preclinical (n=16), prodromal (n=19) and mild‐to‐moderate (n=16) AD participants (Table 1), based on MMSE and CDR scores, in 8 European countries. Metrics based on device data were calculated for participant commitment (study duration completion percentage or wear time) and compliance (task completion percentage). Patient experiences were monitored using bi‐weekly semi‐structured phone interviews.ResultMezurio average commitment and compliance were 90% and 85% respectively (Table 2) and were comparable across diagnostic groups. Wear time of Axivity, Fitbit and wearable camera was high (>86%), with 48% of those offered adopting the optional wearable camera (Table 2). Participant feedback was positive, with relatively few problems reported (Figure 1).ConclusionRADAR‐AD shows that age and impairment are not necessarily barriers to successful deployment of complex RMT study protocols. We acknowledge that our high commitment and compliance rates benefitted from an active rapport between researchers, participants and care givers, which may not be reproducible in every scenario. Nevertheless, this study shows that AD patients are able and willing to comply and engage with technology.This work has received support from the EU/EFPIA Innovative Medicines Initiative Joint Undertaking (grant No 806999). www.imi.europa.eu. This communication reflects the views of the RADAR‐AD consortium and neither IMI nor the European Union and EFPIA are liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.