Study Protocol of a Comprehensive Activity Promotion Program for the Prevention of Dementia: A Randomized Controlled...

Area of Science:

• Gerontology
• Neuroscience
• Public Health

Background:

• Technical devices can promote behavioral changes for higher activity levels.
• Smartphones are increasingly used for human activity recognition.
• The impact of behavior change techniques on preventing dementia in older adults is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the effects of behavior change techniques on dementia prevention in community-dwelling older adults.
• To utilize smartphones as a tool for behavior change interventions.
• To assess the efficacy of a smartphone-based program in reducing incident dementia.

Main Methods:

• A randomized controlled trial involving 3,498 individuals aged 60 years and older in Japan.
• The intervention group used smartphone applications for physical, cognitive, and social activities, including dual-task walking with cognitive stimulation.
• The control group received general health lectures; both groups were assessed over 30 months.

Main Results:

• Data collection is ongoing; results on dementia prevention are pending.
• The study aims to detect incident dementia through cognitive tests and health insurance data.
• Analysis will compare dementia incidence between the smartphone intervention and control groups.

Conclusions:

• This study may provide the first evidence on the effectiveness of information communication technology (ICT) and the Internet of Things (IoT) in preventing incident dementia.
• If successful, the protocol could offer a cost-effective and safe strategy for maintaining cognitive health in aging populations.
• The findings could support the development of digital health interventions for dementia prevention.