In the last decades there has been a growing interest in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders, both for clinical activity and for research purposes. On one side, ICT can be employed to help in the assessment and evaluation of patients’ functional impairments: for instance, it allows the development of new methods to evaluate more objectively behavioral and functional deficits. On the other side, ICT can be employed to support patients in everyday activities, and can play a key role in the patients’ treatment, stimulation, and rehabilitation. This is the underlying idea for the development of Serious Games (SG), which are digital applications (some of which based of Virtual Reality) specially adapted for purposes other than entertaining; such as rehabilitation, training and education.
Some studies have started to investigate the effectiveness of employing ICT in patients with AD and related disorders, and it is important to chart the field, and to opent he dialogue between the different professionals working in the field (e.g., researchers, clinicians and engineers). In order to promote this dialogue, the Cognition, Behaviour & Technology Unit (CoBTeK) of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) organizes every year an interdisciplinary workshop devoted to develop recommendations for the use of ICT in these target populations (Robert et al., 2013, 2014).
The purpose of the Research Topic “ICT for assessment and rehabilitation in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders” is to foster the dialogue among the different stakeholders working on the topic, in order to identify challenges and new perspectives in the field, as well as to gather recommendations for the employ of ICT in AD and related disorders in clinical practice but also for clinical research, including pharmacological and non pharmacological trials.
In the last decades there has been a growing interest in employing Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related disorders, both for clinical activity and for research purposes. On one side, ICT can be employed to help in the assessment and evaluation of patients’ functional impairments: for instance, it allows the development of new methods to evaluate more objectively behavioral and functional deficits. On the other side, ICT can be employed to support patients in everyday activities, and can play a key role in the patients’ treatment, stimulation, and rehabilitation. This is the underlying idea for the development of Serious Games (SG), which are digital applications (some of which based of Virtual Reality) specially adapted for purposes other than entertaining; such as rehabilitation, training and education.
Some studies have started to investigate the effectiveness of employing ICT in patients with AD and related disorders, and it is important to chart the field, and to opent he dialogue between the different professionals working in the field (e.g., researchers, clinicians and engineers). In order to promote this dialogue, the Cognition, Behaviour & Technology Unit (CoBTeK) of the University of Nice Sophia Antipolis (France) organizes every year an interdisciplinary workshop devoted to develop recommendations for the use of ICT in these target populations (Robert et al., 2013, 2014).
The purpose of the Research Topic “ICT for assessment and rehabilitation in Alzheimer’s disease and related disorders” is to foster the dialogue among the different stakeholders working on the topic, in order to identify challenges and new perspectives in the field, as well as to gather recommendations for the employ of ICT in AD and related disorders in clinical practice but also for clinical research, including pharmacological and non pharmacological trials.