Facilitating Delivery and Remote Monitoring of Behaviour Change Interventions to Reduce Risk of Developing Alzheimer's Disease: The Gray Matters Study

摘要

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a recognised global health concern, with currently no cure. Research is now focusing on risk factors and prevention methods associated with AD. Many of these risk factors can be attributed to lifestyle choices and environmental factors. In this paper, we present a smartphone app designed to facilitate, encourage and monitor behaviour change as part of a 6-month randomized control trial with 146 participants. The app provided a convenient, scalable and cost effective method of allowing participants to monitor and review behaviour change data. 94.5% of users entered, and 91.8% reviewed, their performance daily. Over 141,800 individual behaviour logs were submitted across the six-month trial. Analysis of these logs has shown positive trends in behavioural change across all domains, with particular emphasis on efforts to decrease stress, higher sleep promotion and increased social engagement. Respondents' rating of the app's effect on their health improvement: 31% reported "a great deal of effect", 48% reported somewhat of an effect, and 3% said the app was the key factor.