Month: November 2019

by Gibson Chimamiwa

Older individuals prefer to age in their home environments despite their vulnerability to chronic diseases and frailty. To make it easier for individuals suffering from dementia to live in their own homes for as long as possible, new smart home solutions are needed. Due to their cognitive decline, they are prone to frequent habit changes at various dementia stages, and hence they need particular support to manage these situations.

In order to meet the care needs of the patients at different stages of the cognitive impairment, smart home solutions need to know and reason upon the activities and habits of the patients and also be able to recognise habit changes in real time. The changes in habits indicate the transition of the patient from one stage of dementia to the other. Early recognition of such stage transitions could assist caregivers in providing treatment or other interventions to slow the progression to late-stage dementia.

The state-of-the-art in smart homes for dementia have focused on activity recognition. However, dementia patients experience changes in habits and therefore there is need to extend activity recognition to habit recognition. In habit recognition, the aim is to capture one or more activities that are performed in a regular and repeated way such as detecting that the user usually sleeps for 8 hours per day. Observed deviations from the habits could indicate that the patient is moving from one stage of dementia to another.

Overall, while smart home solutions based on activity recognition for dementia patients exist, they are insufficient to support patients with changing habits such as dementia patients. Our ambition is to extend activity recognition to habit recognition system in order to detect habit changes and determine dementia stage transition. The habit recognition system could eventually be implemented in patients’ homes to assist caregivers to slow the progression to late-stage dementia through treatment or other interventions. These interventions will also enable patients to remain longer in their preferred environments thereby reducing societal costs.

By Maja Dobrosavljevic

With the growing population of older individuals, age-related disorders receive increasing attention as both an individual and public health concern. ADHD is usually associated with younger age; however, in approximately 60% of children and adolescents with ADHD, significant problems with attention and everyday functioning can persist to middle and older age. Although an increasing number of older adults has started seeking help in relation to ADHD symptoms, we still do not know what proportion of older population can be classified as having ADHD. This is because previous studies have been mostly conducted in children, adolescents and adults younger than 50.

Available research has shown that ADHD is linked to higher mortality rates and to a wide range of physical health problems, such as cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, as well as to mental health and behavioral problems. Additionally, recent studies have indicated that ADHD might be a risk factor for dementia. However, the available scientific literature has provided only sparse and inconclusive insights in how ADHD is manifesting in older individuals in relation to their health.

Having in mind the striking knowledge gap in what we know about ADHD in older adults, our first step is to conduct a systematic review of available literature. This will help us to identify more precisely the proportion of the older age population with ADHD, as well as to gain better understanding of manifestation of ADHD in this age group. In the next step, we aim to investigate a potential association between ADHD and age-related disorders, by using large-scale Swedish population registries.

Our findings can be applied in shifting the focus of health providers and research community to this, mostly unrecognized, population. Also, age-specific prevention programs could be developed that might help older people with ADHD to prevent certain health issues by employing small changes in their eating habits or physical activity. Finally, viewing ADHD as a life-long, chronic condition, rather than a developmental condition, can provide new insights into neuropsychological aspects of ageing.