My Memory

Inspiration

Dementia is an awful affliction that leads to the deterioration of cognitive function like memory and thought. As of 2022 over 55 million people are living with Dementias and that number is expected to grow to 140 million by 2050. Dementia is the seventh leading cause of death for people over the age of 65, including my mother and father.

Some dementias like Alzheimer’s disease can take a long time to manifest. When a person suffers from these diseases it's up to family and/or friends to help answer even the simplest questions they have, like what my phone number is or where I am to more heart breaking ones like who their children's names are.

With age, simple things sometimes become difficult and as a carer, we can't always be there to answer those questions. That's where My Memory can help.

My Memory is a platform designed to support those afflicted by memory loss issues to help recall some of the information that they might ask in their daily life. Simply ask Alexa to use My Memory and ask it questions like Who Am I or What's my Phone Number right up to What are my children's or grand children's names.

My Memory is also a great way to be connected with your love one. We offer a "memories" area that allows carers to upload pictures and details about past events, new events that have happened recently or just random pictures that they think might brighten their loved ones day. To recall these memory just ask Alexa to show me my memories. We feel this keeps a connection to your loved one even when you can't be there physically.

We believe this platform can open up new ways of communication with loved ones, while also supporting them through a very difficult time in their aging experience.

What it does

Carers open the My Memory portal and enter details about the patient. This could be name, phone number, address, family members or memories and the patient can then recall them on their Alexa device.

Some things they can recall on their Alexa device are as follows:

Who am I. This gives the patient a quick run-down or who they are and their immediate family members.
What's my emergency contact details. This is great to recall when someone asks how to get into contact with a loved one or carer.
What's my address. This will provide the address of where the person is currently staying. This could be a house, hospice, hiospital or care facility.
What's my phone number. As stated, will list main phone and/or mobile phone number.
Do I have any children. This will list any children associated to the patient.
Do I have any grand children. This will list any grand children associated to the patient.
Show me my memories. This will list any memories stored against the user's record. This will usually be a picture and some text describing what's happening in that uploaded image.

More features are going to be added in coming versions of the software.

How we built it

My Memory is built into a few solutions:

My Memory Portal. This is an Angular website that allows users to enter information about the patient. When data is collected in this portal it is saved into a SQL Sever backend via API Gateway calls. These calls are authenticated via Cognito and OAUTH2 access tokens.
My Memory Alexa Skill. This is the Alexa skill used by the patient to recall information about themselves. This was build via a .Net Core C# and is executed as an AWS Lambda function which taps into the same SQL server mentioned in point 1.

Challenges we ran into

Time was very limited to create the database, stored procedure, Lambda functions, API gateway, Route 53 endpoints, Angular website and indeed the Alexa solution itself.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I am super proud of what was created here. This is a great solution that I think can be used in any nursing home or care facility and the back-end also paves the way for integration with third party systems and other devices / solutions.

Alot was built in a very short amount of time, but I am confident that putting in the time at the start of this process paves the way for a better platform for quick and decisive improvements in the future.

What we learned

I learned a great deal about how account linking held together. This solution needs account linking to make sure the patient that uses it only retrieves information pertaining to them. Would really like to make this alot easier in the future though, so will be looking into that.

What's next for My Memory

I want to take this system in a few directions.

Work with the Western Australian Health Department here to see if they can provide some funding towards this system. This could give us a potentially revenue stream until we get our own plus add credibility to the platform to on-sell to nursning homes and care facilities.
Work out a collaboration with Alzheimer’s Australia to see if we can trial this software locally and potentially get some endorsements and/or advertising.
Talk with some existing CMS systems that nursing homes use to see if we can integrate with them to obtain patient data. This would obviously be with their blessing and the blessing of the bursing facilities that use them but I think this could be a great way to extend the system's use.
Extend the current platform to include Alexa into a sort of digital picture frame that periodically show the memories entered into the system to the user. Kind of like a digital slideshow that they can put on their mantle and ask questions of it, play music through it etc.
Extend the current platform to Google TV and Apple TV. Being able to see the memories entered into the platform on their televisions would be a great solution.
Have an easier login process for the device. Probably some custom authentication with a 6 digit code or something.