Quest Diagnostics introduces digital cognitive assessment tool to help physicians assess patients with dementia

First digital testing technology from diagnostics leader is designed to help primary care physicians and ACOs improve the detection and monitoring of patients with dementias such as Alzheimer's disease

Quest Diagnostics (NYSE: DGX), the world's leading provider of diagnostic information services, today announced CogniSense™, a digital cognitive assessment tool that aids in a physician's assessment, diagnosis and care management of individuals with cognitive dysfunction. CogniSense is designed to overcome several limitations of conventional paper-based cognitive assessment, such as lack of objective, easily trackable data over time and integration to electronic health records (EHRs).

"CogniSense addresses a gap in cognitive health assessment today – a lack of digital technology that seamlessly integrates results into a patient's electronic health records to track cognitive function and disease progression over time," said Edward I. Ginns, MD, PhD, medical director, neurology, for Quest Diagnostics. "CogniSense's features enhance the efficiency and ease of cognitive assessment – especially in a primary care setting."

CogniSense is designed to provide healthcare practitioners with a digitized version of the Memory Orientation Assessment Test (MOST) to assess the cognitive health of a patient's brain through the use of memory recall techniques, information comprehension tests, and tablet-based clock drawing that provides assessment of patient's memory, orientation, sequential memory and time. MOST has been shown to have greater sensitivity and specificity than standard, paper-based mini–mental state examination^® (MMSE) and MiniCog tests, based on studies involving more than 3,500 individuals.

Available as an app for the Apple^® iPad™, CogniSense is administered and scored electronically, providing an objective baseline score and progressive scores that can be stored in https://www.questdiagnostics.com/">Care360^®, Quest's lab-ordering platform, and any of nearly 600 electronic health records that connect to Quest. Once established as part of the patient's medical record, results from CogniSense allow clinicians to track and monitor cognitive function of the patient over time.

"Studies show that cognition plays a huge role in how patients take care of all the management of their health," said Harry Jacob, MD, CMO for Primary PartnerCare, an accountable care organization (ACO) based on Long Island, NY, that piloted CogniSense on nearly 300 patients. "That is why effective digital tools for the assessment of patients at risk for dementia are essential for an ACO."

"CogniSense combines Quest's leadership in neurology laboratory diagnostics and healthcare information technology to represent a new type of clinical testing we call 'integrated diagnostics," said Jay G. Wohlgemuth, MD, senior vice president and chief medical officer, Quest Diagnostics. "Integrated diagnostics will be increasingly important to neurological disease diagnosis, particularly dementia, given the dearth of evidence-based guidelines and reliable technologies for facilitating assessment and diagnosis for the globally aging population."

Quest Diagnostics is championing the development of new integrated diagnostics that combine multiple diagnostic modalities such as cognitive assessment, laboratory testing, imaging, and clinical knowledge to aid in the detection and diagnosis of dementia. Through a collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Memory and Aging Center, Quest Diagnostics is also facilitating the development of evidence-based standards for screening, diagnosis, and monitoring of people with dementia to help improve outcomes and better address the needs of the nation's aging population.

CogniSense was unveiled during the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Toronto in July 2016 and is available to download from the Apple^® iTunes™ Store by searching for "CogniSense."