Currently at the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Lawrence Grierson, a post-doctoral fellow from McMaster University, is testing a highly specialized GPS belt as part of a study into dementia of Alzheimer’s type.

“We want to see that this belt is functional as a way-finding device for people who come from populations where their memory is impaired -in particular, people with early onset dementia who can often become frustrated and housebound.”

Mr. Grierson has already collected two thirds of the data for a comparative study that so far has examined young healthy people and elderly people (65-70-years old) that are not suffering from dementia, in a series of routes set up in the hallways of the hospital.

He has already discovered elderly people have a harder time remembering verbal directions compared with the younger people, but when heading down the routes with the GPS belt, the elderly were on par with the younger people without making any errors.

The final test will collect data from subjects with early onset dementia of Alzheimer’s type.

The ingenuity behind the Tactile Sight belt comes from Waterloo University professor John Zelek.

In 2006 he built the first version of the belt using products he purchased at every day stores.

Around the same time, Mr. Zelek received a $156,000 grant from the U. S. Alzheimer’s Association for his research and $40,000 from the Ontario Centres of Excellence. With this funding he was able to hire hardware and fashion designers to help him further develop the product.

Since then Mr. Zelek started Tactile Sight Inc. to commercialize the belt, which is now a lot smaller and modern looking.

“It almost provides a sixth sense for a person to get directed themselves,” said Mr. Zelek.

The belt has four vibrating motors at the main cardinal locations: the front, back, left and right side. These are all hidden inside the belt.

There is also a small pouch that holds the controller with all the sensors and the battery. It contains the GPS, microprocessor, altimeter, compass and accelerometer.

The belt will work in combination with Google maps helping people follow a route created with the mapping software by presenting a list of way points –decision making locations.

The belt will direct the person to their destination through a tactile vibrating sensation.

People with Alzheimer’s will need a family member or caretaker to program the belt. They could also track on the map where the person with the belt is located.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is make it affordable as well. Anything that is useful should cost as much as a cell phone or less,” Mr. Zelek said.

He said that the initial cost will be around $700, but the government will reimburse three-quarters of the price of assistive devices making the total around $175.

“It’s nice to help people and see the research come to fruition -that it actually improves the quality of people,” said Mr. Zelek.

Since the GPS system also works indoors, the belt could even see people with Alzheimer’s get through buildings. It is also planned to help blind people, not by replacing their guide dog or walking stick, but by having another guide option.

Mr. Zelek said the next step after the Toronto Rehab trials is to produce a few dozen belts and provide them to a larger constituency.

“With the baby-boomers aging they call it the ‘tsunami of dementia’, so to have projects like this is really interesting,” said Deb Bryson, psychogeriatric resource consultant at the Alzheimer Society of Hamilton. She said the baby-boomers are more technologically savvy so they will be able to use more of these devices.

“Anything that helps a person with way finding will be great,” said Ms. Bryson. “People with Alzheimer’s miss a lot of cues in way finding and are easily distracted, so it’s always been a challenge in how to help people find their way home.”

She said it would be interesting to see if a person further along in dementia could associate that hum on the side with what they are supposed to do. She said tactile cues would be easier than verbal instructions, but only if a person learns what the vibrating cues mean.

“It may be hard to remember the sensation means to turn right or in a particular direction, depending on how far a person is in dementia, but it could be possible,” she said.

Ms. Bryson said the difficulty for the belt may come in when the tracking mechanism is involved.

“In Canada and the United States there are ethical questions where it is right to track a person just because they have a neurological deficit,” she said.

When an individual is being tracked it is infringing on their privacy rights. That is why Canada has not had GPS systems for persons with dementia as of yet, she said.

“The ideal situation would be to have a discussion with the person that is affected by the disease early on, while they still have the cognitive ability to make those decisions. If they agree to use this kind of tool, then it would be fine with the consent upfront,” said Mary Burnett, chief executive officer of the Alzheimer Society.

On the other hand they both agree that the belt would be less intrusive than verbal cue reminders that would be audible to other people around them. That way the user would not feel embarrassed.

“The GPS would be great because often when people get lost on a walk it isn’t when they take their normal route, it’s when they vary from their normal route,” Ms. Bryson said.

Ms. Burnett said one in three people over 85 suffer from dementia and for every person affected by the disease 10 more are impacted. That would make 90,000 people in Hamilton impacted by the disease.

There is still a stigma about this dementia, but there are more people speaking out, that is why it is important to have projects like these, she said.

The onset of dementia is around the age of 65. About 60 per cent of dementia sufferers have the Alzheimer’s kind, with early signs of memory loss. Eventually people start encountering difficulty with day to day activities, and with the combination of memory and functional loss it becomes hard for a person to live independently in a community.