ESTABLISHING OBJECTIVE DIGITAL BIOMARKERS RELATED TO TIME AND EFFORT SPENT ON CAREGIVING ACTIVITIES

Assessment of subjective and objective effects of caregiving most commonly occurs using questionnaires or diaries, which can be subject to inaccuracies in self-reporting. Given the inherent difficulty of accurately reporting activities related to caregiving, tools that objectively measure aspects of caregiving are needed. Here we report findings from a natural history clinical trial enrolling 30 participants with MCI or Alzheimer’s disease living with a caregiver. A pervasive sensing and computing system is deployed in each couple’s home for one year, continuously providing data on measures related to caregiver engagement. Caregivers are accepting of the home system (no dropouts), which provides information on time spent together and sleep quality in the caregiver. This system provides an unobtrusive and longitudinal method to study activity and effort related to caring for patients with AD in the community and could be used to show quantifiable improvement in caregiver-related outcomes in trials testing caregiver-directed interventions.