A Hampton teenager has designed an app to improve everyday life for dementia sufferers.

The Year 10 student at Lady Eleanor Holles School, South West London, hopes to enhance the quality of life of patients in the early stages of dementia.

Catherine is among 30 young scientists presenting their research at the Institute for Research in Schools (IRIS) Virtual Conference this week.

The 15-year-old developed her Personal Assistant for Dementia (PAD) after spending time with sufferers and their families while on holiday in the summer of 2018.

“I became interested in dementia, its causes and presentations. I learned that one of the many frustrations of people with early onset dementia was the loss of independence associated with their declining memory function,” said Catherine.

PAD’s 20 adaptable icons include features that helps dementia sufferers keep track of time, assists with their medication and healthy living and facilitates access to key contacts and emergency services.

A tracker helps relatives and carers track the patient’s movements, for example when making trips out of the home, and find missing objects.

A ‘lost for words’ icon tackles one of the most common challenges experienced by sufferers by providing a reverse dictionary and picture prompts.

Michael Reiss, Professor of Science at the UCL Institute of Education and IRIS trustee, said:

“Dementia can have terrible consequences for the quality of people’s lives and for their families too. It is important therefore that we do all we can to enable those with early-stage dementia to retain their autonomy.

“This wonderful project entails the development and testing of a Personal Assistant for Dementia (PAD), a smartphone or iPad digital app. Evaluations of PAD by those with early-stage dementia have been very encouraging, suggesting that further development of this idea might make a real difference to the quality of people’s lives.”

In the UK, dementia affects almost one million people, with one in 14 of over 65-year-olds, and one in six over 80s suffering from the disease, costing around £26 billion per annum in care.

PAD has been shown to be successful at improving independence and confidence and enhance the quality of life in a small sample of five sufferers in the early stages of the disease.

In the future, Catherine hopes to explore adding spoken instructions and remote access for carers. She would like to extend the study to a larger and broader sample.