Podcast: March 2009 Archives

  (43:09)

"A daily dose of rigorous cognitive exercise," to prevent or slow dementia, that's how Dakim CEO Dan Michel describes his company's Brain Fitness System.

Long term memory, short term memory, language, computation, spatial orientation and critical thinking are the six cognitive domains the system exercises.

He bootstrapped the company and self funded it for the first 5 years before raising an angel round in 2005. In 2008 he raised an institutional round of $10.5M.

Does the system stave off Alzheimers? Can it be used as a hedge against dementia?

  (23:55)

Tamara Hayes of the Oregon Center for Aging and Technology (ORCATECH) at Oregon's Health and Science University is collaborating with Steve Agritelley at Intel on common projects related to aging in place technologies.

She 'instruments' peoples homes with unobtrusive sensors. What for? Prompting to take a medicine, for example; the sensors are context aware and know when it's a good time to interrupt. Using motion sensors for movement, "phone sensors for socialization, contact sensors in the door so we know when they come and go, we use bed mats for restlessness in bed." It's like surveillance, but without any cameras.

There's a lot of technology out there, but its effectiveness or application "is not well understood yet". 

"There are a lot of different disciplines cooperating to make this happen."