Conception and usability pilot study of a new digital cognitive screening tool on tablet: AlzVR project

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the first cause of dementia worldwide without any current curative treatment. Facing an increasing prevalence and its associated costs, AD represents a public health challenge. Usual diagnostic methods still rely on extended interviews and paper tests provided by an exterior examiner. We aim to create a novel, quick cognitive-screening tool on a numerical tablet.

This pilot program, built and edited with Unity^®, runs on Android^® for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7 FE^®. Composed of seven tasks inspired by the Mini-Mental Status Examination and the Montréal Cognitive Assessment, it browses several cognitive functions. The architectural design of this tablet application is distinguished by its multifaceted capabilities, encompassing not only seamless offline functionality but also a mechanism to ensure the singularity of data amalgamated from diverse sites. Additionally, a paramount emphasis is placed on safeguarding the confidentiality of patient information in the healthcare domain. Furthermore, the application empowers individual site managers to access and peruse specific datasets, enhancing their operational efficacy and decision-making processes. We performed a preliminary usability assessment among young, healthy subjects.

Twenty-four participants were included with a final F-SUS 'excellent' score. Participants perceived the tool as simple to use and achieved the test in a mean time of 142 s. No technical errors occurred.

These preliminary results suggest that our new assessment on a numerical tablet might be usable and acceptable for a short cognitive screening but requires further studies among older populations.