The Computerized Test for Screening Dementia in the Elderly: A Pilot Study

The problem of the increase in the elderly or the aging society is currently occurring in many countries.
In Thailand, the population aged 60 and over will increase to 33% in 2040 [1]. It is one of the problems that
require innovation in various parts of medicine, treatment, therapy, and innovation to support their lives. Our
focus in this study will be on dementia, the main cause of disability in the elderly [2], a condition most prevalent in the elderly and causes significant damage to themselves and others. There are many tests to assess the risk of dementia using interviews and tests. However, the commonly used assessment test is paper-based, requiring medical staff to evaluate the results [3]. In this pilot research, we proposed using a computerized test to screen for dementia in the elderly by analyzing collected data when the elderly interact with the test on a computer or tablet. The test was developed from the commonly used paper-based test such as Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) [4], and online testing such as the Wisconsin Card Sorting test (WCST) [5]. The test has five tasks in the Thai language that the elderly must complete and use the time around 30 minutes. The developed test has various domains to test their cognitive ability, such as attention, orientation, visuospatial, language, and memory—the detail of each task is shown in Fig 1.