Automated cognitive assessment schedules

Automated assessment schedules are a Creyos feature that sends a sequence of cognitive assessments to patients by email on a cadence you define, such as once per month for 12 months or once every 3 months indefinitely.

Once a schedule is set, assessments are sent automatically, so you collect cognitive data between visits and after treatment ends without manual administration.

Why use automated assessment schedules?

Moving from reactive to proactive care

Historically, healthcare has been based around a reactive approach to patient care. Aside from annual physicals or check-ups, people generally only seek out a healthcare professional when they have a specific symptom or issue that needs to be addressed. More and more, patients and practitioners alike are realizing that a more proactive approach is necessary. Particularly in the case of a potential brain health issue, early detection before more pronounced symptoms are identified by patients and/or worried family members is critical to exploring all possible interventions.

If you are a health practitioner conducting periodic (e.g., annual) physicals, automated assessment schedules give you an easy, automated method of obtaining important cognitive data throughout the year, allowing you to closely monitor any potential issues or worrying trends.

Monitoring cognition after treatment ends

If you are a healthcare practitioner who specializes in treating individuals with short- or longer-term neurological disorders or conditions, the patient care cycle is typically finite. In other words, a patient will come in to see you several times over a specific period, such as 3 visits over 8 weeks. Aside from perhaps a few more follow-up visits or check-ups in the months and years post-treatment, your relationship with that patient is limited. Even if they do return to your clinic years later, there is typically a major data gap: you will generally have no means to evaluate how their cognition has trended over that period of time.

That is where automated assessment schedules come into play, allowing you to monitor a patient’s brain health even after they leave your clinic.

For example:

• If you are a neurofeedback clinician, psychiatrist, or psychologist helping an individual recover from or manage their mental health, setting up an assessment schedule for patients after treatment may enable you to proactively get ahead of potential relapses.
• If you are a neurologist, concussion specialist, or occupational therapist helping individuals recover from traumatic or acquired brain injuries, you can continue to gather data post-treatment, with no additional effort, to ensure the patient is maintaining the appropriate level of cognitive function months, or even years, after injury.

How do you set up an automated assessment schedule?

Create a new schedule

To set up an assessment schedule, select the parameters of your schedule first. Get started by clicking the “Schedules” tab on the left navigation menu, then click “Create New Schedule” as shown below:

Next, choose a few simple parameters to define your schedule. Get started by giving your schedule a relevant and memorable name, and select the assessment that this schedule will send:

Set how often assessments are sent

You’ll then be prompted to select a few options that will define how often the assessment is to be sent, and when it should end. For example, to send an assessment once every two weeks and collect 8 assessments in total, choose the following options:

As a final step, you can set two additional conditions:

1. Send a reminder email 48 hours after each assessment email, to encourage patients to complete the assessment.
2. Pause the schedule if an assessment is not complete by the date of the next email. You can manually re-enable a paused schedule at any time.

You will then have the opportunity to confirm your selections. When you are satisfied with the parameters you have chosen, hit “Save” to create the schedule:

Assign patients to the schedule

Now that the schedule is created, you can assign patients to this schedule on the schedule details page by clicking the “Assign” button:

When you click on "Assign", you'll see your full patients list, and you can select all the patients you want to add to this schedule in one go, as shown below:

Next, choose when the first assessment is sent:

• Immediately, by selecting the "Immediately" option.
• On a future date, such as one week after the patient's final visit to your office.

Then choose the best time for patients to receive these emails (mornings, afternoons, or evenings), and click Next:

Once you've set these parameters, you'll then receive confirmation that your patients have been added to the schedule:

Track and manage scheduled patients

Note that you can also assign patients to a schedule individually on the patient details page, as shown below:

For patients who are assigned to schedules, you will be able to review the most recent action and what the next action is based on the schedule to which they have been assigned. You can also "cancel" the schedule for this patient at any time from the patient details page:

From this point on, assessments will get sent automatically and you’ll begin collecting important cognitive data without any manual administration. As assessments get completed, you’ll get email notifications to allow you to quickly scan reports as they come in, giving an easy way to provide proactive care, while forming more meaningful, longer-term relationships with your patients.

Have questions?

If you have any questions, comments or feedback, feel free to comment directly on this article or contact us directly. As always, we are more than happy to hear from you.