Sea Hero Quest game app to help police track lost dementia patients by testing their navigation skills
Professor Michael Hornberger said the research team has been approached by police asking for help via the app
A GAME app could help police track lost dementia patients.
Researchers are helping officers prevent patients going missing by getting them to play Sea Hero Quest.
Data from dementia patients using the app will be analysed by scientists to help predict their likely movements.
The app, which has been downloaded 2.7million times worldwide, is designed to test players’ navigational skills.
Data from the game is analysed by scientists at the University of East Anglia who are studying how people’s ability to navigate deteriorates with age.
Professor Michael Hornberger, who is working on the project, said the team was approached by police forces asking for help after the app was featured in media reports.
Now they are planning a pilot scheme alongside police in Norfolk which will involve known dementia sufferers who are frequently the subject of missing person searches being asked to play on the app.
The patients will then be followed with a GPS tracker as they go about their normal lives, to see if their ability to navigate in the game matches their skills in real life.
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Scientists hope data from the pilot will enable them to predict how likely anyone with dementia is to get lost just by seeing how well they play the game.
This information could be used by police to put plans in place to prevent vulnerable patients wandering away from home – which can be fatal in winter months.
Speaking at the Dementias 2017 conference in London, Prof Hornberger said: “Spatial disorientation, which is one of the most common symptoms of dementia, has been little explored despite the potentially fatal consequences.
“We are looking now into whether we can use data from our virtual reality tests to predict which patients are at high risk of getting lost and we can therefore put better safeguards in place.
“I never anticipated this information [would be used] this way but I realised that obviously it is a huge issue.
"There are quite a few patients who get lost all the time and there are a lot of tragic cases.”