Mindset4Dementia app uses AI for next generation screening tool
A team of students and doctors, led by UCL medic Hamzah Selim, have launched an innovative app which uses fun brain games to screen people for signs of dementia. The Mindset4Dementia app, made available on the App Store this month, asks users a series of questions around age, health and lifestyle, before getting them to complete a series of playful cognitive exercises. The games harness NHS guidelines and mirror the dementia screening process, looking at short and long-term memory, concentration and attention span, language and communication skills and awareness of time and place (orientation). Mindset4Dementia screens for neurological anomalies and uses artificial intelligence (AI) to accurately flag clinically relevant findings. At the moment users are not diagnosed but the data collected, combined with the AI capability, is enabling the researchers to evolve the app into a next generation dementia screening tool, which could be used to diagnose patients in their own home. Hamzah Selim, a 4th year UCL medical student, conceived the idea for a dementia screening app in 2018 and has since built a multi-disciplinary team of students and scientists, with expertise in coding, clinical medicine and neuroscience. After two years' development, and with support from UCL, UCL Innovation & Enterprise and Imperial College London, the Mindset4Dementia app has now been made freely available.
