# Project 3: Technology Tools for Cognitive Support for Health Management Activities for Aging Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment

> **NIH NIH P01** · WEILL MEDICAL COLL OF CORNELL UNIV · 2022 · $609,894

## Abstract

Project Summary
Health self-management—gathering, organizing, and acting on health information from a rapidly growing array
of online sources of healthcare information—is cognitively challenging for many older adults, especially those
with cognitive impairments. The goal for this project is to support the cognitive components of older adults’
health-management activities through development of digital assistant technology tools tailored to three
exemplar healthcare management task activities: accessing support services, managing healthcare finances,
and using the health-management tools provided by Medicare.gov. This project will leverage the machine-
intelligence expertise of our collaborators and our experience in developing and evaluating technologies for
supporting the health and wellbeing needs of older adults to harness technology to provide cognitive support to
aging adults, including those with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and lower SES. The project has three aims:
1) identify barriers and facilitators to diverse older adults use of current tools for managing healthcare in the
three targeted task activities and provide requirements for technology tools to support these activities; 2)
develop highly usable and reliable intelligent digital assistants capable of adapting to a large array of
healthcare tasks in each of the three exemplar areas; and 3) evaluate the efficacy of the assistants compared
to a usual tool including a digital assistant control (e.g., Google Assistant). The project will be comprised of
three phases. Phase 1 will use a multimethod approach across our three study sites to assess the demands
and challenges facing diverse older adults in the performance of the three health-management activities.
Techniques include structured one-on-one interviews of subject matter experts, cognitive task analysis of
existing tools, and process tracing of older adults’ task performance. In Phase 2, we will use the knowledge
derived from Phase 1, together with an understanding of older adults’ cognitive capabilities and limitations, and
their needs and preferences, to conduct iterative design of the digital assistant tools and evaluate their
effectiveness and perceived usability using older adults with and without cognitive impairments and diverse in
technology skills. In Phase 3, we will do a comparative assessment of the digital assistant tools for the three
health-management activities (4 problems in each domain) by randomizing a cross-site sample of 240
participants, with and without MCI, varying in age, ethnicity/race, SES, and technology experience, to novel
tool and control conditions, assessing efficacy and usability of the novel tools. The project will yield important
information on how best to design technology aids to provide cognitive support for health decision making.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10410770
- **Project number:** 1P01AG073090-01A1
- **Recipient organization:** WEILL MEDICAL COLL OF CORNELL UNIV
- **Principal Investigator:** JOSEPH SHARIT
- **Activity code:** P01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2022
- **Award amount:** $609,894
- **Award type:** 1
- **Project period:** 2022-06-15 → 2027-05-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10410770

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10410770, Project 3: Technology Tools for Cognitive Support for Health Management Activities for Aging Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment (1P01AG073090-01A1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-25 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10410770. Licensed CC0.

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