UMass Research Focuses on Helping Seniors Play mHealth Games

A University of Massachusetts researcher is studying whether mHealth games can help seniors living with mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

Sunghoon Ivan Lee, an assistant professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at UMass-Amherst, is using a $436,836 grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a connected health platform that uses video games to boost brain function in people with MCI. The games, loaded onto a tablet, help stimulate short-term memory and selective attention.

“There aren’t many solutions to stimulate cognitive ability in people with cognitive disabilities, especially in their homes, outside clinical settings,” Lee said in a press release issued by the university. “We hope that knowing playing games can improve their cognitive function can further motivate patients to play more games.”

“We thought people with MCI would be the population that could really benefit from serious games – before they move into a more serious condition like dementia or Alzheimer’s,” he added. 

mHealth games and digital health tools enhanced by gamification concepts have long help promise in healthcare circles as a means of reinforcing care management through patient engagement. But all too often the ideal has struggled to become reality.

Some companies – in particular Mightier and Akili Interactive – have seen success developing mHealth games for children, most often to help them with behavioral health challenges like autism or ADHD. Others games have been developed to help younger patients adjust to chronic diseases, like diabetes or cancer.

For older patients, games have focused on helping with cognitive impairments, like Parkinson’s or Alzheimers, as well as to regain certain functions after a stroke, concussion or head injury. Some games have also been targeted at helping caregivers dealing with stress, anxiety and depression.

Lee’s partner in the project, South Korea-based Woorisoft, has designed six games, known collectively at Neuro-World. They’ll be tested in a pilot program conducted by UMass-Amherst, Rutgers University and the University of Montreal, involving 50 seniors diagnosed with MCI. Half of the group will be tasked with playing the games for 30 minutes twice a week for 12 weeks.

Lee said the games were tested in a smaller study with stroke survivors, and were found to help improve cognitive function.

They also could predict expected improvement, based on the game results, giving researchers insight into designing care management functions. Lee and his colleagues plan to use the new study to create algorithms that could be used by care providers to develop more complex games, and they’ll interview participants to gain insight on patient engagement and personalization.

“We believe that outcomes of this project will open a new door leading to previously unexplored datasets and understanding of patient-technology interactions to promote positive behavior changes to enable self-administered, serious game-based cognitive training,” he said in the press release. “And that can form the basis of a wide range of future investigations of hemiparesis rehabilitation and personalized disease management.”