Review of Methods for Data Collection Experiments with People with Dementia and the Impact of COVID-19

Harper, M.; Ghali, F.; Hussain, A.; Al-Jumeily, D.

The development of a wearable-based system for detecting difficulties in the daily lives of people with dementia would be highly useful in the day-to-day management of the disease. To develop such a system, it would be necessary to identify physiological indicators of the difficulties, which can be identified by analyzing physiological datasets from people with dementia. However, there is no such data available to researchers. As such, it is vital that data is collected and made available in future. In this paper we perform a review of past physiological data collection experiments conducted with people with dementia and evaluate the methods used at each stage of the experiment. Consideration is also given to the impacts and limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns both on the people with dementia- such people being one of the most at risk and affected groups- and on the efficacy and safety of each of the methods. It is concluded that the choice of method to be utilized in future data collection experiments is heavily dependent on the type and severity of the dementia the participants are experiencing, and that the choice of remote or COVID-secure methods should be used during the COVID-19 pandemic;many of the methods reviewed could allow for the spread of the virus if utilized during a pandemic. © 2021, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.