Continuing Care
Creyos Health announces system for dementia screening
April 10, 2024
TORONTO – Creyos Health, a pioneering healthcare technology company dedicated to objective brain health measurement, has unveiled an end-to-end online dementia screening, testing, and care planning protocol to enhance how healthcare providers assess and monitor patient cognition.
This protocol, now available in the Creyos platform, is the result of 30 years of rigorous research and scientific validation. It offers full spectrum cognitive care, from early detection of mild cognitive impairment, to testing for an accurate dementia diagnosis, followed by tailored care planning, and ongoing longitudinal monitoring.
The protocol comes on the heels of new statistics released by the Alzheimer’s Association on the prevalence of dementia, indicating that nearly 7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, with that number expected to grow to 13 million by 2050.
The early signs of dementia, such as mild cognitive impairment (MCI) often go unrecognized and, as a result, care that could help improve patient quality of life is delayed. It’s estimated that only 8% of older Americans living with mild cognitive impairment receive an actual diagnosis. With 98 million Americans reaching the age of 65+ by 2060, this gap will grow.
“Conventional dementia assessments such as the MoCA, SLUMS, or Mini-Cog can identify significant cognitive decline,” explained professor Adrian Owen (pictured), PhD, OBE, renowned neuroscientist at Western University, and chief scientific officer at Creyos. “However, they often miss mild cognitive impairment, a critical precursor to dementia. Research has proven that early diagnosis enhances intervention efficacy. With a normative database of 85,000 participants, Creyos is uniquely positioned to deliver a scientifically validated screening and testing tool.”
He added, “Our screener was developed by our in-house science team and its effectiveness has been validated across three distinct populations – healthy individuals, patients experiencing early memory problems, and those with a clinical Alzheimer’s disease diagnosis. The result is a screening solution that is both sensitive and specific, and one that will have an immediate positive impact in the communities concerned with brain health.”
Creyos’s cognitive screener takes less than 5 minutes to complete and accurately identifies mild cognitive impairment, a potential early sign of dementia.
Comprehensive testing: If cognitive impairment is detected during screening, patients can complete further testing on the Creyos platform. Dementia testing includes four additional tasks and behavioral health questionnaires, aligned with DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for dementia. It automatically tabulates results, reducing time to gather patient information while ensuring greater accuracy.
Care planning: Care plans can typically take 1.5 – 2 hours to create. While critical, they can be a difficult item to prioritize. With Creyos, planning time is drastically reduced. Digitized templates and readily accessible results and key information allow for the creation of high-quality care plans for every dementia patient without the administrative burden.
Providers can generate thorough care plans that include lifestyle advice, medication guidance, and caregiver instructions, all in accordance with Alzheimer’s Association standards.
Longitudinal monitoring: Unlike traditional pen and paper tests or other online solutions, Creyos is dynamic. Its algorithm creates infinite problem sets resulting in excellent test-retest reliability. With patient performance compared over time and against norms, reports clearly show any changes to help providers understand at-a-glance whether cognitive health has remained stable or is declining, facilitating objective discussions among providers, patients, and caregivers.
“We started Creyos because we noticed a significant gap in how cognitive health was being addressed,” said Marc Lipton, co-founder and CEO of Creyos. “We knew providers needed more objective, efficient, and easily accessible cognitive assessment tools. From day one we’ve collaborated closely with healthcare professionals to continuously enhance our platform to meet their evolving needs, and the needs of their patients. With the increased importance being placed on dementia capture and the growing population impacted by this disease, offering a screening, testing and care planning solution was a natural enhancement to our platform.”
About Creyos Health
Creyos Health, formerly known as Cambridge Brain Sciences, is a pioneering healthcare SaaS company dedicated to transforming how clinicians assess and manage patient brain health. Supporting over 5,000 healthcare providers, the Creyos platform offers objective online tasks and digitized behavioral health screeners to provide actionable insights, support early intervention, and deliver evidence-based solutions for a wide range of cognitive and behavioral health conditions. Backed by 30 years of research and a normative database of over 85,000 participants, Creyos has been used in over 400 peer reviewed scientific studies and is recognized as a scientifically validated solution for measuring and monitoring patient cognition. For more information about Creyos Health, visit www.creyos.com.