Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Currently, over 564,000 Canadians are living with dementia and this number is expected to rise to 937,000 by 2031. Family and other unpaid caregivers of people with dementia provide much of the required support. While the internet has many resources that can help, caregivers often do not know what they are looking for, how to find it, or how to assess the validity of resources. CARE-RATE is an online tool being created to enable caregivers to find and evaluate resources for supporting people with dementia. Caregivers use plain language to describe the situation they are facing to CARE-RATE, which then leverages artificial intelligence to have an on-screen dialogue with the caregiver to capture context-specific information. As many family caregivers of people with dementia can be overwhelmed with their responsibilities, it is important that the user interface is designed in a way that supports caregiver abilities and preferences so that interacting with CARE-RATE is as intuitive as possible. Little work has been done into interface design for caregivers of people with dementia, therefore this research focused designing a user friendly online tool for caregivers. We have recently conducted focus groups to determine what design layout and features would preferred and most trusted by potential users and next steps include designing this tool and testing with the caregivers in the community. This research, funded by AGE-WELL, aims to design a more specific and powerful online tool than conventional search engines, allowing individuals to use plain language to describe their problem and be assisted to find a solution. Note. This proposal is entered for the purpose of sharing my research at Summer Program in Aging. I am not applying for research funding and therefore, the research funding questions on the next page are left unfilled.