The Development of Screening Application of the Risk of Elderly with Dementia in Saraphi District, Chiang Mai Province

Abstract

This research aimed to develop dementia screening tools through a mobile application for use by public health volunteers and medical personnel in an attempt to detect the risk of dementia at early stages in Saraphi district, Chiang Mai province and to explore the satisfaction of the application users towards the implementation of a dementia screening application. The sample group was 90 public health volunteers residing in Nongphueng sub-district, Yang Noeng sub-district, and Saraphi sub-district, and 15 medical personnel working in Ban Nongphueng Tambon health promotion hospital, Yang Noeng Tambon health promotion hospital, and Saraphi hospital, Saraphi District, Chiang Mai Province. The research methodology comprised eight steps as follows: 1) conducting documentary research on dementia symptoms, screening tools, and dementia data from medical personnel at the Chiang Mai Neurological Hospital. 2) carrying out a field study with community participation to investigate the circumstances of dementia in Tambon Nong Phueng, Tambon Yang Noeng, and Tambon Saraphi. 3) selecting 90 public health volunteers, and 15 medical personnel to participate in this research. 4) formulating a storyboard which described the application model 5) designing the system and create the application with the consultancy from a psychiatric doctor for the elderly and an occupational therapist. 6) testing the operation of the application and carry out the improvement. 7) preparing the manual 8) publicizing and making the application available. The data collection instrument consisted of a satisfaction questionnaire towards the implementation of an application for dementia screening. The statistics used in the research were mean and standard deviation. The dementia application, named "Brain Screening," was developed using the Flutter software development kit and the Dart programming language. It operates on the Android operating system. This application consists of four cognitive assessments: the 14-question item memory assessment, the Mini-Cog assessment, the 8-question item IQCODE-Modified assessment for relatives or caretakers to assess memories, and the AMT assessment for public health and medical personnel. Additionally, the satisfaction assessment of public health volunteers regarding the application's implementation yielded high levels of satisfaction, with an overall mean of 4.19 and a standard deviation of 0.53.