myAVOS, your Digital Aging Well Coach, your Cognitive Care Solution

The Economic Burden of Chronic Diseases in Aging Populations Chronic diseases are a significant and profound economic issue for individuals, the healthcare system, and society as a whole. With the aging of populations worldwide, the prevalence of chronic diseases is increasing, accounting for  90% of all medical costs in the US  and even greater worldwide. It amounts to $4.1 trillion in annual health care expenditures The presence of multiple chronic conditions in the same individual has profound implications for healthcare costs and utilization. According to the CDC, six in ten adults have a chronic disease, and four in ten adults have two or more chronic diseases in the US.  A Swiss study  found that elderly patients with multiple chronic conditions had healthcare costs 5.5 times higher than those without multiple chronic conditions. Hence, even a small reduction in the prevalence of chronic diseases can result in significant cost savings and a genuine return on in...

Addressing the Challenges: Understanding the Current Reality of Alzheimer’s Care and Support It’s Alzheimer’s awareness week this week. So what should we be aware of?  Well, firstly for the patients and carers, nothing much has changed in the 20 years since memory clinics became common. Services are stretched, waiting lists are long and practical help is in short supply. So families bear the brunt of the reality of dementia and it’s because they do such a great job, the system doesn’t collapse.   The local services struggle on, faced with financial cuts and overtly ageist policy decisions, such as merging specialist elderly services with more “ageless” ones. Memory clinics measure people and serve as a bottleneck to therapies that general practitioners are quite capable of prescribing and have waiting lists to diagnose a disease that most referring doctors know what it is, but the system says they are not qualified to say. Specialists talk of big scientific breakthroughs ...

Prioritizing Brain Health: Overcoming the Neglected Routine Measurement of Cognitive Well-being Your brain is the most important organ in the body, managing every aspect of life, internally and externally. It is crucial to lead a healthy and interactive existence and is vulnerable to the same effects of ill health as the rest of the body. Poor blood supply, reduced metabolism and poor nutritional intake all have short and long term effects, which are often experienced, e.g. brain fog, hangovers, grain brain etc. But we don’t measure our cognitive situation routinely, usually because these things are transient. Why measure cognition? But there are times when measuring cognition could be important. Two-thirds of stroke patients experience cognitive decline, a third going on to dementia. But cognition is not measured on stroke pathways. Could doing so introduce new methods of rehab? 55% of people have cognitive impairment after a heart attack. Though often mild, some impairments persist a...