CREARE LLC — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: A13-090

Description

The recent military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to an increased incidence of mental health symptoms associated with traumatic brain injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, alcohol and substance abuse, mood and anxiety disorders, and chronic pain. The clinical evaluation of service members exhibiting these symptoms usually includes neurocognitive assessment as part of screening or diagnosis. Unfortunately, neurocognitive asessment tests are often time consuming and require trained personnel to administer properly, limiting their use in the military and veteran populations. Creare, in collaboration with our consultant who is an expert in assessment of executed function in psychiatric and neurological disorders at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, proposes to develop, test, and validate a self-administered neurocognitive test battery that probes many of the core neurocognitive domains. The Self-Administered Neuropsychological Assessment Battery will leverage the expertise of our clinical consultant, an expert in assessment of executive function, and systems that we have previously implemented for smartphone-based neurocognitive testing and computer-based self-administered hearing assessment. Using speech recognition, this self-administered test battery will include verbal/language tasks and be hands free for appropriate tasks, aiding patients with motor skill impairment. Providing instructions through embedded video will provide improved consistency and accuracy.