Scheduling Accessory Assists Patients with Cognitive Disorders

Partnership

Levinson received initial funding from NASA and his contracting company, Recom Technologies Inc., of Roseville, California, to research the commercial potential of his artificially intelligent planning reaction model to serve as a tool for helping individuals suffering from various forms and levels of brain impairment. In 1993, the chief of Ames’ Artificial Intelligence Research Branch suggested that Levinson contact Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, which hosts a nationally acclaimed rehabilitation and research center that specializes in brain injuries, to see if the hospital was interested in a research collaboration. Levinson heeded the advice and found a valuable partner in the medical center. This partnership led to further development of Levinson’s technology and funding to support clinical research from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research.

In 1996, Levinson founded Attention Control Systems Inc., in Mountain View, California, to produce and market this NASA spinoff creation.

Product Outcome

Attention Control Systems now offers people with memory, attention, and cognitive disorders a computerized, personal planning device to help them stay on task by overcoming limitations in planning and fulfilling their daily schedules. The device, called the Planning and Execution Assistant and Trainer, or PEAT, is a pocket-sized PDA, complete with a graphical display, touchscreen controls, an electronic calendar, an address book, and a built-in phone. The functionality of PEAT, however, transcends that of a regular PDA scheduling device. PEAT cues users to start or stop scheduled activities, monitors their progress, and adjusts schedules as necessary in response to delays or calendar changes. It uses the automatic planning model developed for NASA to make automatic adjustments to daily plans when a situation changes. Most PDA systems lack this flexibility, requiring their users to manually re-plan and update schedule data when changes occur.

While daily routine activities come naturally to most, individuals with memory, attention, and cognitive impairment may struggle to remember that they have to perform certain tasks. Those with severe impairment to the point where independent living is a challenge are affected most, as they may not only forget to perform tasks, but forget how to perform them.

Whether individuals are mildly or severely impaired, PEAT makes it easier for them to get through their planned schedules by providing cues for task completion and adjusting for unplanned schedule conflicts. PEAT can automatically shift flexible tasks that do not require an exact start time in order to keep the prioritized, scheduled events on track. For example, an individual using PEAT wakes up to a preplanned day that consists of having breakfast with a family member from 9:30 to 10:30, followed by stopping at the bank, and then seeing a 12:00 matinee show with a friend (the individual receives cues from PEAT to inform him/her of all of these scheduled tasks). This agenda was preprogrammed in the user’s device (either programmed by the user or by a caregiver, depending on the degree of impairment), with breakfast and the movie being the top-priority scheduled tasks, and the bank trip being a secondary, unscheduled routine task.

Not everything goes as planned, however. It turns out that breakfast takes longer than the scheduled hour, so the user does not have time to stop at the bank before the movie. Since the bank trip did not require an exact start time, it is a task that PEAT can automatically shift to another available time. This way, the task, though delayed, is not ignored and will not be forgotten, and the individual’s priority tasks—breakfast and the movie—are not interrupted.

The automatic cues that PEAT delivers to its users to start and stop activities can be in the form of customized voice recordings, sounds, and pictures; extra large text and pictures help users with visual and motor problems. Cueing continues until the user responds. Additionally, users can program customized scripts (activity sequences) for breaking large tasks into multiple, small tasks. This feature is especially helpful for highly impaired users who may find difficulty completing tasks such as getting dressed in the morning or fixing themselves a meal.