High Tech Monitors for Alzheimers

New York's Mount Sinai Shool of Medicine is heading up a study. They plan to recruit 600 people over the age of 75 to help test in-home "kiosks". They will turn on automaically to administer monthly cognitive exams. It will be a video of a smiling scientist who appears on-screen to talk participants through such classic tests as reading a string of words and then, repeating how many they recall, or seeing how quickly they complete connect-the-dot patterns. They did this in Oregon. It was a pilot study of the motion sensors which tracked 14 partipants in their upper 80's for almost a year. They found half had mild cognitive impairment, an Alzheimer's precursor, and half were healthy. The National Institutes of Health received a grant to study 300 homes and 112 are being monitored already.