Difficulty staying focused and remembering. Sometimes a slowness in receiving and processing the information arriving from the environment. These are some of the cognitive problems that affect up to 75% of people with multiple sclerosis, and which have a huge impact on their quality of life. Identifying them early, finding the most suitable strategies to counter them, can change the experience of patients and their caregivers. And help could also come from technology, thanks to an app: it’s called DIGICOG and is designed to evaluate cognitive symptoms in people with MS and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Tests for the assessment of cognitive functions
DIGICOG is the acronym for DIGItal assessment of COGnitive impairment in Multiple Sclerosis and the tool, created by researchers from the Italian Multiple Sclerosis Foundation (FISM), is still under construction. When fully operational it should contain four tests for the assessment of cognitive aspects related to verbal memory, information processing speed, language and visuospatial memory (the latter already assessable in the version under construction of the app, accessible here). How? For example by inviting the patient to remember the position of some dots on a chessboard.
A “bar code” to follow the evolution of multiple sclerosis
by Dario Rubino
The app was designed both as an assessment tool for clinicians alongside patients and as a self-assessment tool by people with MS, who will be able to access it from smartphones and tablets. Evaluation is the first step in developing personalized intervention strategies, as he explained Jessica Podda, Fism researcher who participated in the project: “Clinician, person with MS and caregiver play in the same team. It may be appropriate to modify and adapt the context in which the patient lives by inserting external aids, such as calendars, whiteboards or personalized containers for medicines, and the caregiver must be aware of the clinical picture of the person with MS and his rehabilitation needs “.
Multiple sclerosis, a drug can slow it down in the most severe forms
by Dario Rubino
The added value of patient participation
In addition to offering itself as an easy and fast remote continuous monitoring tool, DIGICOG also represents one of the clearest examples of the added value of the direct participation of patients in the evaluation – and therefore in the management – of their pathology, as mentioned above. Giampaolo Brichetto, Coordinator of FISM Rehabilitation Research, Health Director of the AISM Liguria Rehabilitation Center. “We are experiencing a technological and digital transformation in medicine, which will lead to increasingly advanced tools for assessing multiple sclerosis. AISM with its Foundation is carrying out various projects in this area, of which DIGICOG-MS is also a part, which involves technological aspects but also of self-management of the pathology, through the use of self-reported data from patients. This allows us to carry out a very important aspect, namely the science of the person, that is, how the person perceives the disease, through reporting tools of scientific value such as Patient Reported Outcomes “.
Multiple sclerosis: from the study of twins the key to discovering how the disease develops
by Letizia Gabaglio
