Paz Rey Duarte hasn’t been able to get the message out of her head for 24 hours: “possible risk detected.” Although she hasn’t been formally diagnosed by a doctor, the 73-year-old woman with impeccable grey hair is now convinced that she has Alzheimer’s. “For some time now, I’ve noticed that I forget the simplest things,” she says, adjusting a cotton shawl she wears around her neck to combat the Atlantic coastal chill in her home town of Vigo, in the northwestern region of Galicia in Spain. She can’t remember, for example, the title or author of the book that she’s reading, nor the name of the medication she’s taken every day for months. “I’m worried,” she says.
The senior enrolled in preventative programs at the Association of Relatives of Alzheimer’s and Other Dementia Patients of Galicia (AFAGA) after retiring. At first, before her memory problems became apparent, it was like being a member at a social club for seniors. But just one day before speaking with EL PAÍS, Paz found out that she was at risk of becoming one of the 40,000 new Alzheimer’s cases that are diagnosed every year in Spain, of which 65% are women. The warning didn’t come via a specialist, but rather, a video game.
Rey is a user in the pilot program of The Mind Guardian, an application developed by scientists from the atlanTTic Research Center at the University of Vigo and the Translational Neuroscience group at the Galicia Sur Health Research Institute, in collaboration with Samsung. The South Korean corporation, which financed the project and provided technical and business resources, has so far invested a total of $27 million in its Technology with Purpose program, which applies technological innovation to solving social problems.
The application, which is free and recommended for people over the age of 55, became available on March 11 for Android users in Spain. The Mind Guardian is a screening tool, meaning that it does not offer medical diagnosis as such, but rather, employs three different artificial intelligence techniques and a variety of games in order to analyze its users. Based on the results of tests for episodic, procedural and semantic memory, it determines possible cognitive impairment. The project has been endorsed by the Spanish Society of Neurology and the Spanish Society of Psychiatry and Mental Health.
Rey was identified as a “person at risk” by the app, which suggested that she had two options: consult an expert for a more in-depth diagnosis, and/or wait six months and repeat the app’s tests to see if any change took place. She believes that her best plan of action is to be alert to possible symptoms and ask for advice on habits that could slow the progress of what is, for now, likely cognitive decline.
