Health Systems to Use mHealth to Help COVID-19 Patients With 'Brain Fog'

Three health systems will be testing an mHealth platform aimed at helping patients experiencing cognitive dysfunction following COVID-19, a side effect to the coronavirus pandemic that could affect long-term recovery.

Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Vanderbilt University Medical Center are partnering with Akili Interactive on the connected health program, which will use Akili’s AKL-T01 digital therapeutic platform to combat what’s being called “brain fog.” They’ll begin screening patients for the study next month.

Boston-based Akili is well-known for developing mHealth and telehealth tools that use video gaming concepts to address cognitive function impairments caused by different chronic conditions, including ADHD and autism.

“Clinicians are seeing an increase in cognitive impairments among COVID-19 patients and though we don’t yet know how long these difficulties last, we are concerned about how these cognitive difficulties may affect people in their daily lives,” Faith Gunning PhD, vice chair of research in the Department of Psychiatry, an associate professor of psychology in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine and associate attending psychologist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and the study coordinator, said in a press release. “It’s critical that we identify therapeutics to help the increasing number of people whose lives have been impacted by cognitive impairments associated with COVID-19.”

“The chronic symptoms of COVID-19 long haulers represent a serious and growing public health concern that will linger long after the acute nature of COVID-19 has passed,” added James Jackson, PsyD, assistant director of The ICU Recovery Center at Vanderbilt and lead psychologist for the Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship (CIBS) Center at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “We’re excited by the potential of new therapeutics that target cognitive impairments to help COVID-19 survivors.”

The study conducted by Weill Cornell and NewYork-Presbyterian will involve some 100 people who have recovered from COVID-19 and are experiencing a deficit in cognition. Half will receive digital therapeutic treatment for six weeks, while the remaining participants will serve as a control group, and they’ll be able to receive treatment in their homes.

The Vanderbilt study will involve another 100 patients, spilt into two groups, and will involve four weeks of treatment. The health system will draw participants from those who have completed the SARS-CoV-2 Household Transmission Study.

This isn’t Vanderbilt’s first go-around with gaming technology. Roughly three years ago, the health system launched a project that used mHealth technology to help recent ICU patients “exercise” their brain at home following hospital discharge to boost recovery and reduce cognitive issues.

“This investigation is the first to our knowledge to evaluate feasibility of a computer gaming approach of cognitive rehabilitation in survivors of non-neuro/non-trauma critical illness,” lead researcher Jo Ellen Wilson, MD, MPH, of the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital, and her colleagues reported. “Such an approach is appealing as it is more scalable than traditional cognitive rehabilitation interventions that require intensive face-to-face interaction between patients and clinical professionals.”