Electronic Reminding Technology Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Effects on Timely Task Completion

Objective: To determine whether automated reminders from 2 contemporary personal digital assistant (PDA) devices produce higher rates of timely task completion in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Setting: Outpatient and community rehabilitation settings. Participants: Thirty-six adults aged 18 to 66 years with TBI and self-determined complaints of memory impairment. Measures: Timely completion rates for assigned memory tasks under 4 randomly assigned memory aid conditions. Results: Significantly, higher completion rates were found when using either PDA device when compared with a combined baseline and paper memory aid condition (for Palm OS device, Incidence Rate Ratio [IRR] = 2.14, P < .0005, CI [confidence interval] = 1.77-2.59; for Microsoft Pocket PCOS device, IRR = 1.47, P < .001, CI = 1.18-1.82). A significant difference in completion rates was also found between the 2 PDA devices (IRR = 1.46, P < .0005, CI = 1.26-1.70), with the Palm version producing the better scores. Conclusions: Substantially higher rates of task completion (more than double in some cases) when using either PDA device suggest that rehabilitation clinicians can make productive use of PDA-based memory aids in their TBI patient populations. The strength of the effects of PDA device usage argues for further investigation of the impact of device usage on quality-of-life and costs of care, and of personal and caregiver factors predictive of successful and sustained device usage.