SilverBills: A Financial and Legal Tech Tool for Caregivers

November 20, 2023 updated by: Marci Lobel-Esrig
Financial and legal management for persons with dementia (PwD) is a crucial responsibility of caregivers. This responsibility adds to the stress and strain of caregiving. Current technology tools that help with bill management and budgeting often require a high degree of technical expertise and provide an insufficient degree of personal support to address the caregivers' needs. Current approaches to financial management are typically aimed at technologically savvy millennials rather than caregivers. Additionally, these approaches do not address the need for safe and accessible storage of legal documents. Thus, the current solutions available for these tasks are a mismatch for caregivers. The investigators will address the lack of effective financial management and legal support for caregivers of PwD. Using proprietary technology, SilverBills receives, scrutinizes, stores, and pays bills on behalf of clients. The goal of this project is to decrease the stress and strain on caregivers of PwD, by providing a simple, safe, and effective financial and legal management tool. The investigators aim to build an easy to use, customizable, client facing application for caregivers to direct the financial activities of PwD. In addition, The investigators will enhance the capabilities of the application to reconcile banking information, detect fraud, secure data, provide enhanced reporting capabilities and provide further budgeting and planning functionality. Finally, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Denver, The investigators will assess caregiver burden and physical, financial, and emotional distress. The team supporting Silverbills V2 includes expertise in elder law, business development, Ruby on Rails software engineering, financial security and cognitive health, caregiving, research design and statistics. The work proposed should demonstrate that the SilverBills V2 product will: 1) Provide a financial management tool which includes a messaging system and vault of critical documents for caregivers of PwD and/or older adults, and 2) Evaluate the effectiveness of our product to decrease caregiver stress and increase caregiver quality of life. This team will support the rigorous scientific validation which will potentially provide evidence of our innovation and support this critical work to provide technological tools for financial and legal management to caregivers of PwD.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Detailed Description

Research has demonstrated that education, information and support improve caregiver wellbeing, improve their mental health, and delay the need to move the persons with dementia (PwD) to along-term care setting. Caregivers are often responsible for managing the legal and financial affairs for PwD. This responsibility adds to the stress and strain of caregiving. The SilverBills client-facing application provides an easy to use, efficient financial and legal management tool to caregivers, decreasing caregiver burden. In order to assess the effectiveness of the SilverBills tool, the investigators will measure caregiver burden as well as mental, physical and financial health (baseline and post-intervention).

Research Questions:

  1. What are the effects of a client-facing application on the primary outcome (caregiver burden) between baseline (T1) and end (T2) of the study?
  2. What are the effects of a client-facing application on the secondary outcomes (mental, physical, and financial health) between T1 and T2?
  3. What are the moderators of the effects of client-facing application on the primary outcome and secondary outcomes between T1 and T2?

To achieve the aims of this proposal, recruited participants will remotely and electronically (via Qualtrics data collection software) provide informed consent for research. Participants will be recruited as detailed in the recruitment and retention plan. Participants will meet the following screening criteria: a) Participants must be caregivers aged 18 or above; b) participants must be caregivers of people with dementia; and c) participants are able to provide consent without the aid of another individual.

Participants will complete two surveys at two different time intervals. The first survey will take place at the outset of the research study when the participants are enrolled (T1). The second and final survey will be administered 6 months after the start of the study (T2). The entirety of the data collected throughout this project will be converted into password-protected files (e.g. xlsx), which will be stored in secured electronic platforms (i.e. password-protected OneDrive) that only select team members will have access to. Survey items will be multiple choice and should take respondents no more than 15-20 minutes to complete.

Study Type

Observational

Enrollment (Estimated)

150

Contacts and Locations

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

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

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

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Sampling Method

Non-Probability Sample

Study Population

The investigators will recruit approximately 150 caregivers who provide care for an individual with dementia that meet inclusion/exclusion criteria.

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • 18 years or older
  • Provide care for an individual with Dementia

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Age <18
  • Lack of cognitive capacity to independently consent and complete participation (i.e., one who would require an informant)

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

  • Observational Models: Other
  • Time Perspectives: Other

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Caregiver Burden
Time Frame: 1 year
Zarit Burden Interview
1 year

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Mental Health
Time Frame: 1 year
Anxiety and Depression using PHQ-9 and GAD-7
1 year
Physical Health
Time Frame: 1 year
Physical health component of SF-12
1 year
Financial Distress
Time Frame: 1 year
InCharge Financial Distress/Financial Well-Being Scale. Items are measured on a scale of 1 to 10, wherein 1 signifies significant financial concern and 10 signifies little or no financial concern.
1 year

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Eric Chess, MD/JD, University of Denver

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

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)

July 1, 2022

Primary Completion (Estimated)

May 31, 2024

Study Completion (Estimated)

May 31, 2024

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

May 6, 2022

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

May 16, 2022

First Posted (Actual)

May 19, 2022

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimated)

November 21, 2023

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 20, 2023

Last Verified

November 1, 2023

More Information

Terms related to this study

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

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.

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