Memesto Wearable Device for Persons With Dementia

December 29, 2023 updated by: Edgewater Safety Systems, Inc.

Development of Memesto Wearable Repetitive Message/Music Therapy Device That Senses and Reduces Agitation in Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease Related Dementia (AD/ADRD) Individuals

An estimated 70% of the 7.2+ million people in the U.S. with Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer's Disease-Related Dementias experience agitation, characterized by poorly organized and purposeless psychomotor activity that diminishes their quality of life. The goal of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project is to develop a wearable therapy device that automatically senses rising agitation, and alerts caregivers while deploying calming voice and music therapy to help them avoid crisis level behavior. This device will improve health outcomes for AD/ADRD sufferers and reduce the substantial stress suffered by their caregivers.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Edgewater Safety Systems developed a smart wearable media player (Memesto) that family and other caregivers could use with a web app to record, schedule and deliver voice and music to an ADRD patient through this device. Caregivers were able to record greetings, reminders to take medication, drink water or eat lunch, and these messages could be played for the patient via the device at set dates and times. In a follow-up survey with caregivers who used the Memesto with patients at care facilities, 11 of 11 rated it 4.5 out of 5 for "usefulness in mitigating agitation." Edgewater proposes to develop a more innovative wearable device that senses rising agitation in the patient and automatically plays therapeutic messages and music shown to have had the greatest success reducing or eliminating agitation in the wearer's previous episodes. With this next generation Memesto, Edgewater aims to improve quality of life for a diverse population of ADRD persons; diminish the use of potentially harmful drugs as an intervention; and help reduce stress and burnout in caregivers. The new Memesto will have four key elements of innovation: 1) repetitive, programmable voice and music therapy in a wearable device, a first for AD/ADRD care; 2) web-based app that enables family and friends to deliver personal messages and music anytime; 3) agitation-sensing system that reads biometric data from non-invasive body-worn sensors to automatically deploy media therapy; and 4) sensor data taken at start and end of the played media to determine effectiveness of that media in reducing agitation and continually prioritize the most effective media.In the Phase I study, Edgewater will partner with Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center to: 1) carry out a 10-week clinical trial on 20 ADRD persons to gather quantitative evidence of the original audio player's effectiveness at reducing agitation; and 2) demonstrate feasibility of ADRD agitation detection and automated intervention. Phase II will focus on complete implementation of a fully automated, miniaturized, wearable Memesto device and a broad field trial testing efficacy of the new agitation sensing and automated intervention system.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

9

Phase

  • Phase 1

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United States
    • Illinois
      • Chicago, Illinois, United States, 60612
        • Rush University Medical Center

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Child
  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Eligible participants will be adults with a dementia diagnosis who have clinically significant agitation, defined as a state of poorly organized and purposeless psychomotor activity characterized by at least one of the following: aggressive verbal (screaming, cursing), aggressive physical (destroying objects, grabbing, fighting), or non-aggressive physical (restlessness, pacing) behaviors.13 The behavioral symptoms must be severe enough to warrant pharmacological treatment. A family caregiver must be willing to participate along with a professional caregiver from the residential living facility.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Persons could screen fail if the device cannot be utilized by the person living with AD/ADRD, family caregiver, or professional caregiver.

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Persons with ADRD living in a residential care facility
Each consented participant will receive the current Memesto device and will be provided formal and informal training instructions. After consent and screening, a two-week training period with a Memesto device will be followed by ten weeks of data collection. An experienced research assistant will administer the baseline NPI in order to collect the agitation ratings by the family caregiver, and the professional caregiver will be collected by a trained research assistant and captured in an electronic case report form designed using REDCap.14,15 Then, participants will undergo evaluation of the NPI agitation domain at 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 6 weeks, 8 weeks, and 10 weeks. Adverse events related to the device will be collected from the family and professional caregivers. Human centered system designers will work with the operations team to enhance participant engagement and maintain high quality data collection.
Device: Memesto
Edgewater plans to develop the next generation Memesto, a wearable device able to sense increasing agitation in ADRD sufferers and automatically deliver agitation-reducing personalized voice messages and music most effective at calming the individual based on past interventions. This innovative product will be the first wearable ADRD device to track agitation via body-worn sensors and automatically deploy agitation-reducing voice and music therapy without any caregiver interaction. The new system will use analytics to track the effectiveness of the various media and update the calming 'play list' over time.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change from Baseline to Week 10 in average Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) agitation domain score
Time Frame: 10 weeks
The NPI agitation domain score is a composite score (symptom frequency x severity) ranging from 1 to 12; a higher score represents greater distress.
10 weeks

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Change from Baseline to Week 10 in average Clinical Global Impression - Severity (CGI-S) score
Time Frame: 10 weeks
The CGI-S is rated on a 7-point Likert scale with responses ranging from 1 to 7; a higher score represents greater severity of illness.
10 weeks

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Edgewater Safety Systems, Inc.

Collaborators

Rush University Medical Center

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Jeffery T. Banker, MS, Edgewater Safety Systems, LLC

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

August 31, 2022

Primary Completion (Actual)

November 30, 2023

Study Completion (Actual)

November 30, 2023

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

November 9, 2021

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 29, 2021

First Posted (Actual)

December 10, 2021

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimated)

January 3, 2024

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

December 29, 2023

Last Verified

December 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 1R43AG074725-01 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on Alzheimer Disease

Clinical Trials on Memesto

Search Similar Trials

Sponsors and Collaborators

Medical Conditions

Drug Interventions

CROs by country

CROs in Singapore

Conditions

Rare Diseases

Drug Interventions

Dietary Supplements

Sponsor/Collaborators

Locations

3
Subscribe