Creyos Health's cognitive task battery is designed to be an assessment, rather than a diagnostic tool. The objective data on how a patient compares with an age-matched population may assist in the diagnosis of disorders with a cognitive component, and built-in self-report questionnaires can assist in determining mental health disorder symptoms with automated scoring that highlights established cutoff scores. However, Creyos Health should be used in conjunction with other information and clinical judgement to reach conclusions regarding an individual’s health. Ultimately, Creyos Health does not replace the judgement of a qualified provider.

Creyos Health tasks are randomly generated and adapt to the patient’s performance in real time. These features make them appropriate for assessing patients multiple times, as answers cannot be prepared for or memorized, and practice effects are minimal. Many specialists use Creyos Health to assess patients regularly over the course of multiple months or years.

Each score on the Creyos Health report is based on a comparison with a population of the same age range and gender as the patient. The population database was collected in the course of several large-scale worldwide studies, such as the Fractionating Human Intelligence paper published in Neuron. Participants in the database were not screened for any particular disorders, so it is designed to be representative of the entire population—not only healthy control participants.

Cognition is central to drug addiction, overall. Studies have suggested that cognition predicts treatment adherence—for example, poor reward-based decision making is linked with relapse, and executive function is in many ways the opposite of the impulsivity that can define addiction. The brain regions that underlie addiction overlap with those that support a variety of cognitive functions, and neurocognitive rehabilitation is often suggested as part of addiction treatment. That said, the specific tasks related with addiction and relapse depend on the specific type of addiction, the stage the patient is in, and factors pertaining to a single individual. Creyos generally recommends a broad assessment that covers all areas of executive function, before narrowing down testing to fit a specific patient’s needs.

Overall, Creyos Health has psychometric properties that meet or exceed the standards set by the traditional scales and tools that addiction specialists are used to. Various types of validity have been established through decades of scientific research and clinical usage, and the Creyos Health tasks are direct descendents of some of the most trusted traditional neuropsychological tests available. Reliability is strong for a short test of cognition—the tasks themselves have test-retest reliabilities in the acceptable to excellent range (see Hampshire et al., 2012), and features such as customizable email instructions and interactive tutorials further increase reliability in the healthcare context supported by Creyos Health.

Creyos Health was built from the ground up as a web-based platform that can be accessed by any patient from any location. Built-in features allow you to instantly send an assessment to a patient by email, or set up an email assessment schedule to automate remote testing. You may also generate URLs to copy into your own email system. Interactive tutorials and other instructions ensure that patients can complete tasks without supervision, and a validity indicator highlights any potentially invalid results. See also: Five Ways to Increase Compliance When Sending Cognitive Assessments by Email.