Usability Assessment of a Pervasive System to Assist Caregivers in Dealing with Repetitive Behaviors of Patients with Dementia.

The care for patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) imposes significant burden on care providers. Often the primary care giver is an elder with health issues of her own. Repetitive questioning is one of the behaviors that cause more stress on caregivers. We present the results of a usability study of an Ambient Augmented Memory System aimed at assisting patients with early AD and their care providers deal with this behavior. The system uses digital cue cards in a mobile phone and a digital memory board at home. An important concern in the design, and the focus of the evaluation study is not to create more stress on the care provider in operating the system, an important challenge considering that they often have no previous computer usage experience.