How can Artificial Intelligence help people with memory disorders

Let’s start by imagining what your life would be like if you suffered from a memory loss disease. What if, moments after you ordered at the restaurant, you couldn’t recall anymore what you just said to the waiter? What if you can’t remember what you’ve been doing during the past hour? What if you couldn’t recognize your own wife or children anymore?

Unfortunately, this isn’t just a bad dream that we would eventually wake from, but the reality for millions of people across the world. According to a 2018 statistics report published by The National Institute for Health and Welfare in Finland, 46 millions people worldwide live with dementia.

For them and for those suffering from other various memory disorders (such as Alzheimer, Huntington, brain trauma consequence or simply ageing), everyday tasks can become really hard to manage, while the risks of being isolated on a social level or having a domestic accident are very high.

The costs of care

One of the main concerns about brain diseases that affect memory is that past a certain threshold, patients need 24/7 care, but not everyone can afford it. According to the same source mentioned earlier, the global financial costs incurred by memory disorders is estimated to be around almost 820 billion US dollars, with 85% of the cost being incurred by the 24/7 care and monitoring.

But oftentimes, people can’t afford this or don’t want to hire external help, so it falls on the family members to take care of their ailing loved ones, with all the implications that come along.

Now, taking care of your family is great and all, but unless you’re a certified medical practitioner, this won’t mean that you suddenly now possess the medical knowledge or the ability to deal with extreme reactions and distress that such patients can show sometimes.

How could technology help them?

With technology and software becoming more cutting-edge day by day, it’ll only natural that possible solutions start to prop up. One such purveyor of solutions is Napal Innovation, an IT company with headquarters in Paris, France. The Napal Team is not made out of neurologists, nor pharmaceutical researchers, but it is composed of passionate engineers and mathematicians, ready to put their knowledge and efforts to work for a better tomorrow.

They have been working for years gathering, storing, structuring and compiling terabytes of data for their customers that run “Big Data” projects or for developing Business Intelligence solutions, that already use powerful Artificial Intelligence to predict/prevent Corporate Fraud.

One day, they started thinking: what if they could leverage all these cutting-edge system technologies to enable patients with an artificial intelligence helper that would use ‘silicon’ memory? Today, patients suffering from other conditions (such as heart diseases) already use silicon heart devices (Pace Makers) and they lead normal lives.

What if this knowledge could be used in order to build a tool to do the same, for people suffering from Memory Disorders?

‘At some point, we realized that with all our technical knowledge, we could really make a difference and help lot of people. Our solution is de facto an extract of what we do the best: scalable IT infrastructure & innovative ways of using Artificial Intelligence. Our challenge here is to show that a tech firm can do a lot for our society and inspire other tech leaders to engage in this kind of approach.’ — Thibaud Peverelli, CEO, Napal Innovation

Introducing MNEME

Napal Innovation’s goal is to create a real-time support system that safeguards your memory, a powerful tool that will collaborate and augment the human capability of any afflicted patient. By leveraging the latest technology in the field of big data and machine learning, they aim to give back to the patient what they’re losing or what they have already lost.

MNEME never sleeps, never misses a word or a reaction. It can perform complex analysis in a fraction of a second and can, in the case of emergencies, contact the doctor in charge of the patient, if the situation requires live medical interventions.

One other point to note is that the user will gain autonomy and safety at the same time, being able to stay longer at home without entering a clinic. Moreover, families will now also benefit from a feeling of reassurance, because the system will be running 24/7, monitoring, collaborating and enhancing the patient’s life so that they can continue to lead a normal life.

How does it work?

The MNEME system consists of three modules: Muse, Ark & Argos. We’ll take a look at each of them and explain how they work.

MUSE is the way in which the patient interacts with their memory. It’s presented as a voice or a text assistant that can be triggered by using a device or by voice activation. Muse will help the patient on a daily basis by assisting them in their routine (follow-up on food, hygiene, social advice). The patient can also ask Muse to remind him of a certain memory.

ARK’s only function is collecting and archiving information. Ark will automatically record all conversations, meetings, places, as well as daily actions like preparing a meal. Nothing will ever be forgotten again. Ark benefits from bank-level data security systems, to ensure users receive the best possible information security.

ARGOS will monitor and analyze the patient’s data. This module will be able to re-enact the feeling and motions of a conversation, reproducing the evolution of a relationship between the patient and a third individual.

It will also monitor the memory disorder’s progress and its side effects, so in the case of a crisis, it will alert medical staff. For example, Argos can closely monitor the effects of a new drug with a 24/7 overview of the effect on the patient.

‘The patient has a simple conversation with a member of their family. Simultaneously, MNEME will record and format this memory, as well as all contextual data such as the emotional state of the patient at the time. Thus, regardless of the events or the evolution of the patient’s state of health, they will always be able to access a faithful and objective version of their memory.’ — Thibaud Peverelli, CEO, Napal Innovation

From the medical staff’s use case, it’s like a patient being remotely overseen by a doctor. By using ARGOS, the doctor can create detailed reports of the cognitive state of their patient.

All verbal interactions between the patient and their family are shown in MNEME. A rapid deterioration of lexical capabilities would signal the doctor a rapid advance of the disease. Medical treatment is set up, while the doctor can remotely monitor the effect of this new treatment in real time.

A community-wide matter

In order to raise awareness and see how the community would receive the project, Napal started sharing their idea with the public. They created two Facebook pages, one in English, one addressed to the French-speaking audience and started collecting questions and suggestions from them.

Napal started grass-root and is developing the project in tight collaboration with those that would actually use MNEME — doctors and the families of the patients affected by memory disorders. In less than 24 hours, their French page already received 400 followers and hundreds of messages.

People have shown both enthusiasm and worry. They started asking questions whether the remote monitoring system would replace face-to-face visits to real physicians, if MNEME will be financially affordable for everyone or what kind of hardware is needed to operate such a complex assistant.

Napal made the promise to themselves to develop MNEME as a project addressed to the masses, so that it could actually make a change for the better in the lives of the 46 million people worldwide affected by memory disorders.

ˊThe purpose of MNEME is to provide additional data to the caretaker and to the doctors, so that they can have a better overview of the current state of the patient, not to replace the face-to-face appointments. The main idea is that having 24/7 available data is more accurate than examining the state of the patient only when he’s visiting the hospital.

Most important, in case of a crisis, the system can warn the doctor that one of his patients is going through a crisis and that he can be in danger. This might be life-saving.

MNEME is going to be built in such a way that it can be accessed from any smartphone, with no need for to acquire special hardware. Another one of our promises, and maybe the most important, is that we want to keep MNEME affordable for the majority of us. We look at this project as an opportunity to make the best use our expertise and actually help people from all arround the world.

The 1st version will be available in 2019.’ — Thibaud Peverelli, CEO, Napal Innovation

If you are interested in the project, if you want to make some suggestions or just to keep a close eye on MNEME’s evolution, their website is just one click away.

The future of healthcare

Napal Innovation’s project is just one example of how technology and Artificial Intelligence could revolutionize the healthcare sector. Whether we are aware of it or not, big data is becoming central to numerous industrial niches, as this new side of the tech industry continues to evolve.

Big data and AI possess the capability to impact not merely every area of business, but in fact every life on the planet, and healthcare is one field that will benefit massively from this new phenomenon in the coming years.