Posts published in “Resource”

"Kirk Moody is still searching for his wife, Nancy Paulikas, who went missing in Los Angeles in 2016. Her disappearance helped inspire a new program there to safeguard people with dementia or cognitive conditions that make them prone to wander. (Rob Kuznia) In October 2016, a 55-year-old retired software engineer with early-onset Alzheimer's wandered out of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as her husband used the restroom. Nancy Paulikas hasn’t been seen since. Kirk Moody still spends time nearly every day looking for her. 'There hasn't been a single trace,' he says."

After experiencing the world as a woman with Alzheimer’s disease, Ana Lebron took off her virtual reality headset and began to cry. She couldn’t pinpoint which part of the experience left her in tears. After all, she works with Alzheimer’s patients every day as an activities coordinator at assisted living facility Hartwell Place in Andersonville. But when she put on that headset and tried to navigate a virtual grocery store, the lights were overpowering, and the food labels were fuzzy. When people spoke to her, their words were distorted. Her virtual family members shot her frustrated glances before they understood why she kept forgetting holidays, faces and how to cook. “This brings it home even more,” Lebron, said of the experience.

For about half of people with dementia, the condition goes undetected, a problem that poses a major barrier to treatment. But a new study suggests that machine learning can help identify dementia more accurately than humans.Using data from 25,000 patients, researchers built a machine-learning model that accurately classified patients with dementia 84 percent of the time. What’s more, the tech pinged five people who had dementia but had not yet received a diagnosis. What does this mean for the future of dementia care and the world at large? When Apple overtook Fitbit in the wearables market, the dethroned king had to make some big moves. And it did.Over the past year or so, Fitbit has struck a number of deals with health insurance companies, health systems and other organizations. Its increased focus on enterprise health could prove a shot in the arm, which could be bolstered by a secondary campaign centered on clinical data.