Caregiving, International Policies, Research & Best Practice

Dementia could be detected via routinely collected data, new research shows

Posted on August 9, 2018November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

Media Release
July 11, 2018 | United Kingdom, University of Plymouth – Dementia could be detected via routinely collected data, new research shows

photography of person typing — Photo by Christina Morillo on Pexels.com

Improving dementia care through increased and timely diagnosis is an NHS priority, yet around half of those living with dementia live with the condition unaware.

Now a new machine-learning model that scans routinely collected NHS data has shown promising signs of being able to predict undiagnosed dementia in primary care.

Led by the University of Plymouth, the study collected Read-encoded data from 18 consenting GP surgeries across Devon, UK, for 26,483 patients aged over 65.

The Read codes – a thesaurus of clinical terms used to summarise clinical and administrative data for UK GPs – were assessed on whether they may contribute to dementia risk, with factors included such as weight and blood pressure.

These codes were used to train a machine-learning classification model to identify patients that may have underlying dementia.

The results showed that 84 per cent of people who had dementia were detected as having the condition (sensitivity value) while 87 per cent of people without dementia had been correctly acknowledged as not having the condition (specificity value), according to the data.

These results indicate that the model can detect those with underlying dementia with an accuracy of 84 per cent. This suggests that the machine-learning model could, in future, significantly reduce the number of those living with undiagnosed dementia – from around 50 per cent (current estimated figure) to 8 per cent*.

Principal Investigator Professor Emmanuel Ifeachor, from the School of Computing Electronics and Mathematics at the University of Plymouth, said the results were promising.

“Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) where systems automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed,” he said. “It’s already being used for many applications throughout healthcare such as medical imaging, but using it for patient data has not been done in quite this way before. The methodology is promising and, if successfully developed and deployed, may help to increase dementia diagnosis in primary care.”

Dr Camille Carroll, Consultant Neurologist at University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and Researcher in the Institute of Translational and Stratified Medicine at the University of Plymouth, collaborated on the research.

She said:

“Dementia is a disease with so many different contributing factors, and it can be quite difficult to pinpoint or predict. There is strong epidemiological evidence that a number of cardiovascular and lifestyle factors such as hypertension; high cholesterol; diabetes; obesity; stroke; atrial fibrillation; smoking; and reduced cognitive, physical, or social activities can predict the risk of dementia in later life, but no studies have taken place that allow us to see this quickly. So having tools that can take a vast amount of data, and automatically identify patients with possible dementia, to facilitate targeted screening, could potentially be very useful and help improve diagnosis rates.”

The full research, entitled ‘Machine-learning based identification of undiagnosed dementia in primary care: a feasibility study’, was led by the University of Plymouth with collaboration from Re:Cognition Health, Plymouth; the University of Edinburgh; University Medical School, Swansea; Northern, Eastern and Western Devon Clinical Commissioning Group (NEW Devon CCG); and the University of St Andrews.

The paper is available to view in the BJGP Open (doi:10.3399/bjgpopen18X101589).

*8 per cent calculated as follows: 50 per cent of dementia sufferers are undiagnosed, and the machine-learning model detected dementia with 84 per cent accuracy. Therefore 84 per cent of these undiagnosed 50 per cent would be diagnosed using this model = 42 per cent. 8 per cent, the number remaining, would remain undiagnosed.

Miss Amy McSweeny – Media and Communications Officer

Caregiving, Dementia, International Campaigns, Research & Best Practice, The Built Environment, Therapeutic Activities

What good dementia design looks like – A case study on Dementia Training Australia’s work with Scalabrini Village

Posted on August 3, 2018November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

DTA and Scalabrini Village case study profiled at Alzheimer’s International Conference in Chicago from Dementia Training Australia on Vimeo.

A case study on Dementia Training Australia’s work with Scalabrini Village is featured in the program Every Three Seconds, a collaboration between ADI and ITN Productions which highlights the fact that someone in the world is diagnosed with dementia every three seconds.

Source: https://www.dta.com.au/case-studies-dementia-training-australia/

Caregiving, Research & Best Practice

Commonly prescribed medications linked to rise in harmful side effects in dementia

Posted on July 29, 2018November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

News Release
July 2018 | United Kingdom – Commonly prescribed medications linked to rise in harmful side effects in dementia

Medications which are commonly prescribed to people with dementia have been linked to an increase in harmful side-effects, research involving the University of Exeter has concluded.

antibiotic blur cocktail glass cocktail tablets — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The research, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (AAIC) examined the impact of opioid-based painkillers or a class of sleep medication known as Z drugs (zolpidem, zopiclone and zaleplon). They are prescribed to an estimated 200,000 with dementia living in care homes across the UK in total.

In the opioid painkiller research, a team from the University of Exeter, King’s College London and the University of Bergen highlight a tripling in harmful side effects related to the use buprenorphine in people with dementia, compared to those on a placebo. Researchers also identified a mechanism that may be causing the problem.

In a randomized controlled trial of 162 Norwegian care home residents, the team found a significant rise in side effect such as personality changes, confusion and sedation, which can seriously impact people’s lives in dementia. The trial team, led by the University of Bergen, studied 162 people from 47 Norwegian care homes who had advanced dementia and significant depression. In those who were assigned buprenorphine as part of their treatment pathway, harmful side-effects more than tripled. The researchers also found that those taking buprenorphine were significantly less active during the day.

In the Z-drugs research, the team compared data for 2,952 people with dementia who were newly prescribed the medication with data for 1,651 who were not – in order to evaluate the benefits and harms of the medicines. They found that people who take Z-drugs are more likely to fracture a bone than those who do not. Bone fractures are related in turn to an increased risk of death in people with dementia.

Researchers are now calling for studies to examine alternative non-drug approaches to treating pain and insomnia, and appropriate dosing of painkillers such as buprenorphine for people with dementia. Clive Ballard, Professor of Age-Related Diseases at the University of Exeter Medical School, said: “Research into antipsychotics highlighted that they increased harmful side effects and death rates in people with dementia. This compelling evidence base helped persuade everyone involved in the field to take action, from policy makers to clinicians, reducing prescribing by 50 per cent. We now urgently need a similar concerted approach to opioid-based painkillers and Z-drugs, to protect frail elderly people with dementia from fractures and increased risk of death.”

Importantly, research led by Professor Ballard’s team and also presented at the conference also gives insight into the mechanism of why people with dementia are more susceptible to opioid-based painkillers, suggesting they over-produce the body’s natural opioids.

The study treating arthritis in Alzheimer’s mice found increased sensitivity to the opioid-based painkiller morphine in mice with Alzheimer’s disease compared to those without. Those with Alzheimer’s disease responded to a much lower dose to ease pain, and experienced more adverse effects when the dose was increased to a normal level. Looking into this further the study found that the Alzheimer’s mice produced more of the body’s natural endogenous opioids such as endorphins. The study, presented as a poster at AAIC, also concludes that dosing of opioid-based painkillers urgently needs to be reviewed in people with dementia to enable safe and effective treatment of pain, and prevent unnecessary harm and deaths.

Posters presented at conference have not yet been through the journal peer review process.

Watch carers talk about their experience of the WHELD training. To find out more about our world-leading dementia research, follow #ExeterDementia and @Clive_Ballard on Twitter, or visit the Exeter Dementia website.

Ageing & Culture, Caregiving, Research & Best Practice, Therapeutic Activities

Just ten minutes of social interaction a day improves wellbeing in dementia care

Posted on July 27, 2018November 1, 2019 by Joanna Sun

News Release
July 2018 | United Kingdom – Just ten minutes of social interaction a day improves wellbeing in dementia care

An e-learning programme that trains care home staff to engage in meaningful social interaction with people who have dementia improves wellbeing and has sustained benefits.

couple elderly man old — Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

The average person with dementia in a care home experiences just two minutes of social interaction each day, researchers found. They also showed that out of 170 available training programmes for nursing home staff, only three are evidence-based – none of which improve quality of life.

The Wellbeing and Health for people with Dementia (WHELD) programme trained care home staff to increase social interaction from two minutes a day to ten, combined with a programme of personalised care. It involves simple measures such as talking to residents about their interests and involving them in decisions around their care.

The Improving Staff Attitudes and Care for People with Dementia e-Learning (tEACH) study, conducted by the University of Exeter Medical School and King’s College London in partnership with the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), was presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference 2018. The study involved 280 residents and care staff in 24 care homes over nine months.

Carers took part in an e-learning programme based on the WHELD training, with or without Skype supervision. They compared outcomes to usual care. Both treatment arms improved resident wellbeing and staff attitudes to person-centred care. The Skype supported arm continued to deliver improved resident wellbeing four months after the trial was completed.

Joanne McDermid, of King’s College London, who presented the research, said: “Care home staff are under a lot of pressure – it’s a really tough job. It’s a challenging environment for both residents living with dementia and staff. Our programme moved care staff to see dementia through the eyes of those who are living it. We found a simple approach, delivered as e-learning, improves staff attitudes to care and residents’ wellbeing, ultimately improving lives for people with dementia.

“In a traditionally task -focussed work environment, our programme reminds us of the human side; of the full life experience of those living with dementia in care.”

Professor Clive Ballard, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the research, said: “Just take a moment to imagine life with just two minutes of social interaction each day. To accept this is discrimination against people with dementia. We urgently need to do better. Most care home training programmes are not evidence-based. We know our programme works over the long term, and we now know it can be delivered remotely. We now need to roll this out to care homes.”

Caregiving, Research & Best Practice, The Built Environment

Caring for elderly Australians in a home-like setting can reduce hospital visits

Posted on July 20, 2018July 20, 2018 by Joanna Sun

File 20180601 69501 e0s4yh.jpg?ixlib=rb 1.1 — Personalised care that lets people feel as though they’re living independently is better.
from http://www.shutterstock.com

Suzanne Dyer, Flinders University and Stephanie Harrison, Flinders University

A new study out today has found residents with dementia in aged-care facilities that provide a home-like model of care have a better quality of life and fewer hospitalisations than those living in more standard facilities. We also found the benefits of a home-like model were provided without an increase in running costs.

Our study compared home-like models (which have up to 15 residents per unit and free access to outdoor areas) to more standard residential care, where a large number of people are housed in one building. In 2011, around half of all facilities in Australia had places for more than 60 residents, and the average size is growing.

The World Health Organisation has stated smaller home-like residential care settings “hold promise for older people, family members and volunteers who provide care and support”. But Australia is lagging behind other countries in offering alternative models of residential aged care.

What is a home-like model of care?

Most older people with dementia want to stay at home as long as they can. When this is no longer possible, they move into residential aged-care facilities, which become their homes.

These residential facilities, or nursing homes, frequently adopt a model of care that emphasises individuality. This is known as person-centred care. But delivering this model may require more staff or a different mix of staff, which may be difficult to deliver with current funding.

So standard aged-care facilities in Australia often have some similarities to health facilities, with designated staff areas and centralised kitchens. Access to outdoor areas, particularly for people with dementia, may depend on the availability of staff. Despite adhering to philosophies such as person-centred care, the scheduling of this care and of meals often lacks flexibility.

The problems are compounded when residential care is used for multiple purposes ranging from palliative care to providing care for people with dementia. The needs of these two groups are quite different and the lack of focus makes delivering quality care a challenge.

Evidence shows the physical design of the residential aged-care environment may play an important role in the well-being of residents, particularly those living with dementia. Internationally, there is a move towards providing care in facilities that feel more like a home and promote independence.

Such models of residential aged care generally have:

flexibility in daily routines – for example, the time people get dressed and eat
opportunity for residents to participate in domestic activities such as meal preparation
access to outdoor spaces
clusters of smaller living units (up to, say, 15 residents in each)
care staff assigned to living units for continuity of care and development of relationships between staff and residents.

Being involved in simple tasks such as food preparation can improve quality of life.
from http://www.shutterstock.com

What we found

Our study was specifically designed to include people with dementia and their family members. People with dementia are not often included in research studies.

It included 541 participants from 17 not-for-profit residential aged-care facilities in four different states in Australia. They had been residents for a year or longer.

These facilities were all considered high quality. This means they had lower hospitalisation rates for potentially avoidable conditions than the national performance target. And more than 80% of residents in the standard care facilities indicated they felt as safe as they wanted and that their environment was as clean and comfortable as they wanted.

Around one-quarter of people in the study lived in a facility with a home-like model of care. All of them were living with dementia.

The study found residents in home-like models of care had a better quality of life, as rated by the residents themselves or their family members. They also had a 68% lower rate of being admitted to hospital and 73% lower rate of having an emergency department presentation.

We have previously shown residents who lived in a home-like model were 52% less likely to be exposed to potentially inappropriate medications. These are medications where the potential harms may outweigh the benefit, such as antipsychotics or relaxants, but are still often prescribed to older people in residential care.

The benefits for residents were provided with similar running costs for the home-like and the standard models of care. However, the costs excluded differences in the build of the facilities. Initial establishment costs are likely to be higher, due to the requirement for more space per resident.

Rethinking models of care

Funding arrangements don’t incentivise Australian aged-care providers to offer variety in terms of models of care. Government funding is provided based on the assessed care needs of the residents, rather than the preferred model of care or resident outcomes.

Funding supplements are available to care providers for reasons such as residents’ financial hardship or risk of homelessness and to small, rural aged-care service providers, but none are available for offering an alternative model of care.

The Australian government plans to improve the aged-care system to offer “choice and flexibility”. This is crucial, but we also need to improve choice and variety in residential aged-care models.

Suzanne Dyer, Senior Research Fellow, Flinders University and Stephanie Harrison, Postdoctoral research fellow, Flinders University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Caregiving, International Policies, Research & Best Practice

Neglect common in English care homes

Posted on March 23, 2018March 23, 2018 by Joanna Sun

News Release
March 21, 2018 | London – Neglect common in English care homes

The largest-ever survey of care home staff in England, led by UCL researchers, has found that neglectful behaviours are widespread.

Elder care

For the study, published today in PLOS ONE, care home staff were asked anonymously about positive and negative behaviours they had done or had witnessed colleagues doing.

Dr Claudia Cooper (UCL Psychiatry), the study’s lead author, said: “We found low rates of verbal and physical abuse; the abusive behaviours reported were largely matters of neglect.

“These behaviours were most common in care homes that also had high rates of staff burnout, which suggests it’s a consequence of staff who are under pressure and unable to provide the level of care they would like to offer.”

From 92 care homes across England, 1,544 care home staff responded to the survey. The staff were asked whether they had, in the past three months, witnessed a range of positive and negative behaviours. Their responses were linked to data from each care home describing a measure of burnout in care home staff.

Some negative behaviours were categorised as ‘abusive’, using a standard definition,* and based on the behaviour reported, rather than the intention of the care home staff. The most common abusive behaviours were: making a resident wait for care (26% of staff reported that happening); avoiding a resident with challenging behaviour (25%); giving residents insufficient time for food (19%); and taking insufficient care when moving residents (11%). Verbal abuse was reported by 5% of respondents, and physical abuse by 1.1%.

At least some abuse was identified in 91 of the 92 care homes.

Positive behaviours were reported to be much more common than abusive behaviours, however some positive but time-consuming behaviours were notably infrequent. For instance, more than one in three care home staff were rarely aware of a resident being taken outside of the home for their enjoyment, and 15% said activities were almost never planned around a resident’s interests.

“Most care homes, and their staff, strive to provide person-centred care, meaning that care is designed around a person’s needs, which requires getting to know the resident and their desires and values. But due to resources and organisational realities, care can often become more task-focused, despite intentions and aspirations to deliver person-centred care,” said co-author Dr Penny Rapaport (UCL Psychiatry).

“Carers can’t just be told that care should be person-centred – they need to be given the support and training that will enable them to deliver it,” she said.

The study is part of the UCL MARQUE cohort study, which is also looking into cost-effective interventions to improve the quality of care for people with dementia, and will be using this anonymous reporting as a measure of how well training interventions are working.

More than two thirds of care homes residents have dementia. Agitated behaviours such as pacing, shouting or lashing out are more common in dementia, and can make provision of person-centred care very challenging for care staff to deliver, often with minimal training and limited resources.

“With the right training, care home staff may be able to deliver more effective care that doesn’t need to be more expensive or time-consuming. If they understand and know how to respond to behaviour, they may be able to do more without greater resources,” said the study’s senior author, Professor Gill Livingston (UCL Psychiatry).

Dr Doug Brown, Chief Policy and Research Officer at Alzheimer’s Society, commented: “70% of people living in care homes have dementia, and it’s clear from these findings that they’re bearing the brunt of a chronically underfunded social care system.

“It’s upsetting but unsurprising that abusive behaviours were more common in homes with higher staff burnout. We’ve heard through our helpline of people with dementia not being fed, or not getting the drugs they need, because a carer isn’t properly trained, or a care home is too short-staffed.

“By 2021, a million people in the UK will have dementia. The government must act now, with meaningful investment and reform, or we risk the system collapsing completely and people with dementia continuing to suffer needlessly.”

The study was conducted by researchers at UCL and the Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust, and funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and the National Institute for Health Research.

Image

Source: Pixabay

Media contact

Chris Lane

Tel: +44 (0)20 7679 9222

Email: chris.lane [at] ucl.ac.uk

Category: Research & Best Practice