Yahoo News World Alzheimer's Day: Frontline doctors and medical students launch AI screening app as diagnosis crisis worsens
A team of frontline doctors and medical students have teamed up in their spare time to launch a dementia screening app as more and more people go undiagnosed during the coronavirus pandemic.
The doctors have been developing Mindset, an app that harnesses the core values of NHS practice and patient care to detect signs of dementia.
Mindset will be rolled out next month, after the team spent the last two years working on the technology outside their normal clinical hours.
It comes as research shows 62 per cent of individuals suffering from dementia are going undiagnosed and the Covid-19 crisis is greatly exacerbating this neglect, according to the British Medical Journal.
After a grant from Imperial and support from UCL, the team began to research how they would reach an older age group who are not necessarily as technologically literate.
Pre-Covid, they spent time on hospital wards and in residential homes, asking elderly people which font they could read best, how to make the layout easy to use and how to instil a sense of compassionate face-to-face NHS care into the app as much as possible.
Mr Selim said: “It’s about taking the great parts of the NHS and putting it in your pocket and there’s lots of quirky ways to do that. It’s not about replacing doctors either, but giving them a tool which can boost efficiency.”
The 23-year-old said that as doctors, it is important not to look for a specific ailment because it causes bias. So the team built in little tests that also look for signs of other conditions, which “walk and talk like dementia”.
“Mindset will look for signs of Parkinsons, for example," Mr Selim said. "The app is not sensitive enough to diagnose it but it can rule it out,” he said.
“So the algorithm is very much built like a doctor to consider multiple things. It is not a laser focus tool.”
The app is also designed to put patients at ease, delivering clear and transparent communication - just as a doctor would.
He said: “It is similar to what we get in clinical training - to understand patient needs. So we focussed on dementia screening, trying to understand what it would take to put this process on a device in order for those who may have symptoms to use it.
A post shared by Mindset (@meetmindset) on Sep 6, 2020 at 6:21am PDT
“For example, elderly people struggle to type, so we’ve made them into buttons like the old telephones," he said.
Mr Selim's priority was to build a really compassionate app to emulate daily practice in the NHS, saying: “The one thing I can say all my colleagues are is extremely compassionate."
“We wanted to build an app that would help patients and that they would enjoy to use,” he added.
The team have used animation styles and a colour palette that can be as relaxing as possible.
They have also added in jokes and used a lot of emojis. “The elderly love emojis! It’s kind of a revelation,” Mr Selim said.
“We’ve also built patterns in the app to make it much easier to learn and more intuitive - like placing buttons in regular places, having the computer dialogue always on the left in grey and the proceed button always on bottom right.
Mr Selim said they hope to incorporate the app fully into the NHS after the Government announced a £250 million investment in artificial intelligence for health care last year.
The 23-year-old said that senior clinicians have so far loved the app and the team have already been thinking of ideas where the tech could be used in areas like mental health.
“Other medics are seeing the capability of putting vital care in the pockets of patients who need it so desperately,” he said.
“But it also takes pressure off the clinician's workloads, allowing them to really focus on what is important - like patient care or more research into the area.
“In the background, it will also collect data, look at trends and collect epidemiological information. I hope to then pass it onto other institutions to help better the research of dementia as well.”
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