May smartphones help to maintain memory in patients with mild Alzheimer's disease?
To help her with her symptoms, Mohamad El Haj, a psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Lille, proposed Google Calendar, a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. The patient accepted as she was already comfortable using her smartphone. She also declared that she preferred the application as it offers more discrete assistance than a paper-based calendar. With the patient and her husband, Dr. El Haj and his colleagues defined several prospective omissions in the patient, such as forgetting her weekly medical appointment, forgetting her weekly bridge game in the community club, and forgetting to go to weekly mass at the church. These omissions were targeted by sending automatic alerts, prompted by Google Calendar, at different times before each event (e.g., the medical appointment). The researchers compared omissions before after the use of Google Calendar, they observed less omission after implementing the application. The study ...