About CREATE
Who We Are
Funded by the National Institute on Aging through the National Institutes of Health, CREATE is a multidisciplinary and collaborative center founded in 1999. CREATE is dedicated to ensure that the benefits of technology can be realized by older adults to support and enhance independence, productivity, health, safety, social connectedness, and quality of life.
CREATE principal investigators Joseph Sharit, Neil Charness, Sara Czaja, Walter Boot, and Wendy Rogers (from left to right)
What We Do
CREATE researchers develop and evaluate interventions and technology solutions to promote health and wellness for older adults. Our research is aimed at maintaining cognitive, emotional, and physical health of diverse populations of older adults, including those with cognitive impairments.
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Research Projects
P1: Virtual Reality to Support Cognitive Health, Engagement, and Socialization Among Aging Adults
The goal of this project is to design and evaluate an immersive Cognitive Activity Social Technology (CAST) virtual reality system. CAST will provide aging adults with a suite of applications that support cognitive, activity, social, and technology engagement.
P2: Technology Support for Cognition and Social Engagement for Aging Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
The goal of this project is to develop and evaluate SPARC (Supporting Personal Activities and Reinforcing Cognition). This is an intelligent adaptive system that provides cognitive support & enrichment as well as social support & engagement. The focus will be on older adults with MCI. We will include speech and biometric data to explore how these measures can be used as early indicators of cognitive decline.
P3: Technology Tools for Cognitive Support for Health Management Activities for Aging Adults with and without Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI)
The goal of this project is to provide decision support for the cognitive components of older adults’ health-management activities. We will focus on exemplar healthcare management task activities such as accessing support services, managing healthcare finances, and using the health-management tools provided by Medicare.gov.