Design and Evaluation of a VR Therapy for Patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia: Perspectives from Patients and Stakeholders

Immersive virtual reality (VR) technology has shown great promise in intervening in Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Mild Dementia (MD) patients' cognitive therapies. However, current VR applications mainly focus on task performances, ignoring the significant values of other stakeholders (caregivers and therapists) and their roles in MCI/MD patients' therapies. We designed a VR way-finding cognitive task and evaluated its usability and effectiveness by interviewing both MCI/MD patients and stakeholders. Findings suggest that the interventions of stakeholders can improve the performance of the participants. Besides, we identified several significant factors in designing VR cognitive tasks for patients with MCI/MD.