Katherine Hackett
Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) are expected to double in prevalence over the next 30 years. Catching them earlier would let people get treatments that may slow decline and help them stay independent longer.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Psychology
Neuroscience
- Topics
Alzheimer's disease
dementia
early detection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2031
What they work on
- Measure mobility, sociability and device-use patterns from one month of passive smartphone data, including GPS location habits and call activity, in well-characterized older adults at an Alzheimer's Disease Research Center.
- Test whether these smartphone behavior measures track validated measures of cognition and daily function, clinical diagnosis, and plasma Alzheimer's biomarkers (disease-related proteins measured in blood).
- Conduct a mixed methods study with older adults in primary care to identify factors that improve the acceptability of smartphone monitoring for dementia screening.
More about the research
Some of the earliest signs are small changes in everyday life, such as how often a person leaves home or talks with others. Standard clinic tests struggle to measure these changes. Personal smartphones, however, already collect this kind of information in the background as people go about their day.
Why it matters
The project could give clinics, especially primary care practices, a low-burden, scalable way to flag older adults at risk for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias using phones people already carry. Earlier detection could help match patients sooner with interventions that may delay progression, extend independence and improve quality of life. Findings on acceptability could make such monitoring more practical for patients.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Leslie Adams
Stanford University, CA·Public Health & Epidemiology·Early-career
Modify an existing smartphone digital phenotyping protocol, combining ecological momentary assessment surveys with passive GPS and accelerometer data, so it is appropriate for Black youth.
Amy Rodriguez
Emory University, GA·Medicine & Clinical Research
Harmonize and scale behavioral and digital tools that measure lifestyle risk factors, so participants across the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center are described in consistent, detailed ways.
Matthew D Grilli
University of Arizona, AZ·Neuroscience
Test whether smartphone-tracked autobiographical thoughts in clinically normal older adults relate to plasma Alzheimer's biomarkers and to resting-state connectivity of the default network, brain regions targeted early in the disease.
The school
Albert Einstein College of Medicine: 21 labs on PI Pages, $361M a year on research, 36 research doctorates a year.
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