CognoSpeak: a Cognitive Health Assessment Tool (CcHAT)

Project Description

Background & Significance Every 3 minutes, someone in the UK develops dementia; it is the leading cause of death, and care costs around £26.3 billion a year. Referrals for assessment have increased six-fold leading to long, frustrating and anxious waiting times for families, delaying access to treatment and support. This is important because lifestyle changes and treatment can delay progression if a diagnosis is made early, reducing health and social care costs. Over-stretched clinics are unable to monitor people with mild cognitive impairment, despite their 50% risk of developing dementia and some ethnic groups are not accessing diagnosis services. The CognoSpeak:tm: system has been tested on over 220 people and shown to be reliable and more accurate than pen-and paper tests used currently. It can also detect signs of depression and anxiety.

Aim & Objectives The project will

• Work with ethnic groups to understand how CognoSpeak:tm: can be developed to make it easier for them to access memory assessment locally and acceptably
• Evaluate ease-of-use (by patients in their homes and in GP clinics) to see how it compares to current services
• Collect a large amount of data from patients and healthy controls to develop a new version and further improve the accuracy
• Provide cost and benefit evidence, so care commissioners can decide whether CognoSpeak:tm: is sufficiently helpful to justify provision via the NHS
• Prepare CognoSpeak:tm: for NHS use.