Development of a computerized tool for the chinese version of the montreal cognitive assessment for screening mild cognitive impairment

Background: The Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) is used for screening mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and the Beijing version (MoCA-BJ) is widely used in China. We aimed to develop a computerized tool for MoCA-BJ (MoCA-CC). Methods: MoCA-CC used person-machine interaction instead of patient-to-physician interaction; other aspects such as the scoring system did not differ from the original test. MoCA-CC, MoCA-BJ and routine neuropsychological tests were administered to 181 elderly participants (MCI = 96, normal controls [NC] = 85). Results: A total of 176 (97.24%) participants were evaluated successfully by MoCA-CC. Cronbach's a for MoCA-CC was 0.72. The test-retest reliability (retesting after six weeks) was good (intraclass correlation coefficient = 0.82; P < 0.001). Significant differences were observed in total scores (t = 9.38, P < 0.001) and individual item scores (t = 2.18-8.62, P < 0.05) between the NC and MCI groups, except for the score for "Naming" (t = 0.24, P = 0.81). The MoCA-CC total scores were highly correlated with the MoCA-BJ total scores (r = 0.93, P < 0.001) in the MCI participants. The area under receiver-operator curve for the prediction of MCI was 0.97 (95% confidence interval = 0.95-1.00). At the optimal cut-off score of 25/26, MoCA-CC demonstrated 95.8% sensitivity and 87.1% specificity. Conclusion: The MoCA-CC tool developed here has several advantages over the paper-pencil method and is reliable for screening MCI in elderly Chinese individuals, especially in the primary clinical setting. It needs to be validated in other diverse and larger populations.