Developing an App for Cognitive Testing and Learning

Product Background

MCI (mild cognitive impairment) and signs of early dementia are hard to detect; however, studies show that playing the piano has the ability to highlight even the slightest cognitive abnormalities.

Playing the piano involves multiple sensory processing, comprehension, quasi-simultaneous decision-making, and action execution. In short, it is a sure-fire way to analyze and evaluate brain functions and train minds. In order to test and prevent cognitive disorders, our client (a musician) came up with the idea of building a piano emulator from scratch.

Challenge

In order to build a piano emulator app that could detect and calculate the probability of developing cognitive abnormalities associated with MCI and early-stage dementia, the emulator had to be:

• Fast and accurate, with gamified cognitive checkups that fit the clinical workflow
• Suitable for assessing pre-clinical, early dementia and MCI
• Operable by a non-specialist

Solution

The app was released with the following features:

• Visuospatial and motor encoding
• Time-stamped finger responses
• Audio cues
• Integrated the tool for different PACS archives/VNAs compatibility
• An algorithm that collects user-response and analyzes data
• Integrations with EEG and eye-tracking
• Recording history
• Data export
• GDPR and HIPAA compliance