This is a part of the Hot Topic podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Changes in Memory After TBI. Dr. Allison Clark discusses Smartphones as Memory Supports.

So you know it’s really interesting, when I first started working in brain injury rehabilitation, we didn’t have smart phones. You know, we had memory notebooks, we had planners and they can be you know the large notebooks and everyone got one and those can be kind of cumbersome to kind of carry around with you everywhere. And so the development of technology and these apps has been really wonderful I think for persons who have memory problems after significant brain injury.

Because it’s something that’s very portable, it’s easily accessible and it’s, there’s no like sign that there’s something wrong with you if you have it, because everyone has one and everyone’s always on them. And so it’s just, because it’s right there because one of the main things is when we have, if you’re trying to remember something with a person with memory problems it’s really important they get that information down as soon as possible because if they try to remember it later they may forget.

Or they may leave something out, they may misremember something just for example like with Tonya she didn’t do it, and put that information in right way and as a result she misremembered it later. But because we always have our phones with us, it is quite easy for us to just pull out the phone, enter it in right away. And what’s also really nice is because if someone has motor problems we have, there’s a lot of voice capabilities as well so people can talk into it.

You can set alarms, they have task reminders, there’s apps for medications. It’s really, it’s a wonderful tool. Now that being said, not everybody likes to use a phone for everything. And so I think it’s also important to, when we’re working with people is to find out what they’re comfortable using, what they’re interested in using, what they think would be helpful and to try different things. Not just automatically assume that okay well you have to use this because this is the newest, fanciest thing.

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