| Sumario: | Issue In Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related disorders, none of the classical assessment tools, mainly scales and questionnaires, fully capture the complexity of the disease. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide an innovative assessment tool and may also provide assistive nonpharmacological strategies for the management of behavioural disturbances and the improvement of cognitive abilities. Content AD is associated with cognitive decline as well as behavioral changes and a loss of autonomy for activities of daily living. Although no curative treatment for AD currently exists, early AD detection along with early care using pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic approaches can delay institutionalization, slow cognitive and behavioral disturbances, and reduce healthcare costs. ICT may improve clinical assessment of behavioral disturbances associated with dementia, provide more objective and reproducible evaluations, and could provide non-pharmacologic approaches to treatment, such as stimulation therapies, to improve behavioral and cognitive impairments. First, this symposium will present results from experiments using ICT as assessment tools (including wearable sensors such as actimeters and video cameras, and environmental sensors such as automatic video recognition cameras) and as stimulation tools (use of serious games to improve physical activity, cognition and apathetic behaviors). Then, we will present a French-Taiwanese collaborative project called Safe and Easy Environment for Alzheimer's disease (SafEE) aimed at combining wearable and environmental sensors to improve short- and long-term behavioral and cognitive assessments, and propose tailored therapeutic strategies for physical activity, behavioral disorders and cognitive improvement. Structure Four papers will be presented, followed by a question-and-answer session and general discussion. Conclusion Due to the increasing cost of AD care and lack of available pharmacologic therapies, ICT could provide alternatives designed to improve clinical assessment of AD impairments and reduce several behavioral disturbances and loss of autonomy.
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