(P54) A Mobile-Based Multidomain Program to Promote Older Adults’ Cognitive Function

Introduction/Objective: Behavioral and social research has stressed the importance of multi-domain lifestyle interventions to prevent, delay, or remedy age-related cognitive decline among older adults at high risk for dementia. Recently there has been an increasing attention to the mobile-based delivery of multi-domain interventions. However, such programs have not been widely implemented with diverse groups of older adults. In the present study, we implemented the Silvia program, a 12-week, mobile-delivered muti-domian lifestyle intervention that includes (a) daily smart routine, (b) cognitive training, (c) lifestyle monitoring, (d) home-based exercise, and (e) voice-based Artificial Intelligence (AI) cognitive assessment, with older Koreans and examined the program impact on participants’ cognitive function. We also examined whether the program impact would be different by participants’ age. Inclusion criteria were being(a) between 60 and 89 years old, (b) able to operate a smartphone/tablet properly, and (c) able to carry out everyday activities without help of others.

Design/Methodology: Using data at pre- and post-intervention of the participants in the Silvia program (n = 59), we conducted paired t-tests on cognitive function measured by the Cognitive Impairment Screening Test (CIST). We also performed ANOVA to investigate the mean differences in the cognitive function scores before and after the intervention for different age groups (young-old, 62 to 68; old, 69 to 75; old-old, 76 to 88).

Results: The age of the participants ranged from 62 to 88 (M = 72.11, SD = 6.54), and the age groups, Young-old, Old, and Old-old, comprised 25, 24, and 23 participants respectively. The composite cognitive function scores were 18 to 30 (M = 26.63, SD = 2.86) before the intervention and 20 to 30 (M = 28.12, SD = 2.58) after the intervention. Using a paired t-test and analysis of variance, this study found that there was a significant mean difference in cognitive function scores between pre and post-intervention (95% CI = 1.10 - 1.87, p < .05). The difference in the improvement of cognitive function score was higher in the old-old group than in the young-old group (95% CI = -2.29 - 0.10, p < .05).

Conclusion/Discussion: The findings of this study demonstrated that Silvia program demonstrated an improvement in cognitive function among older Koreans. The Old-old group demonstrated more change in cognitive functioning than the other age groups. These findings suggest that the mobile-based multi-domain program can be efficacious in supporting cognitive functioning, especially for the Old-old group. This finding is particularly important in light of the World Health Organization (WHO)’s emphasis on testing the feasibility and acceptability of multi-domain programs for geographically and culturally diverse older adults. The focus on Korean older adults in this study expands the scope of mobile multi-domain applications for dementia prevention to older adults living in East Asia.