Global leader in cognitive science builds online memory evaluation system solution in cloud

As part of the real-world Windows Azure Series, I contacted Michael Meagher, president of the Cogniciti company, to see how the company uses Windows Azure to build its online brain health assessment system solution. Click here to learn about the success stories of Cogniciti company. Next we'll see what Michael Meagher said.

Himanshu Kumar Singh (hereinafter referred to as HKS): please brief your company.
Michael Meagher (mm): Cogniciti is a for-profit venture in Canada, a joint venture to study memory and aging, the global health care leader Baycrest Company, and Canada's largest creative incubation center Mars.

HKS: What is your company's mission?
Mm:baycrest doctors and scientists tell us that our memory and attention naturally become less sensitive as we grow older. The key question is to determine when simple amnesia becomes a more serious problem. Because the early symptoms of memory loss due to age, high cure rates (such as anxiety and depression) and severe illnesses (such as Alzheimer's) are very similar, people tend to postpone tests-usually for years. During this time, many people live in fear that they have the world's second-largest terrorist disease after cancer----dementia. People postponing tests, causing unnecessary concern and complicating the treatment of patients. Our mission is to help people eliminate this delay.

HKS: So what did you do to make the clinical assessment of memory loss simpler?
MM: We created an online scanning tool for memory loss. By the end of 2011, we had completed most of the clinical work, which required a three-hour battery clinical cognitive test to be improved to a 20-minute self-assessment system. Then we started thinking about how to transform the evaluation system--from the PCs that ran in the lab environment to the network. In this process, we want to avoid all the distractions that we have, minimizing latency and spending that includes building scalable IT infrastructures.

HKS: Do you have any particular emphasis on it requirements?
MM: Yes, we want to focus on the necessary scientific research to launch a solution to the market, rather than to create a global scale of IT infrastructure. Shortening initial time-to-market, keeping agile, and minimizing upfront and long-term costs are also critical it requirements. However, we know that the key to choosing the way forward is also the first step in meeting our IT needs, which is to choose a partner we can trust.

HKS: So how did you choose Windows Azure?
MM: After realizing that the cloud solution is right for us, we examined several vendors offering products and eventually chose Windows Azure. It all boils down to this relationship: we need a technical partner that can help us envision a solution and stay there to make sure we succeed. It immediately became clear that working with Microsoft was the right approach.

We also selected members of the Microsoft Partner Network Navantis. Because of its health care experience, it is closely related to Microsoft and has extensive development experience on Windows Azure.

HKS: Please talk about the development progress.
During the mm:2011, the development of the evaluation system began in the Baycrest laboratory. By the end of 2011, the tool had made considerable strides to build an online version. Starting in January 2012, the project team has three full-time developers, a half time quality assurance staff, and a project manager of One-fourth working hours. Developers use the Visual Studio 2010 flagship development system to program and rely on Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server get to manage all other aspects of the application lifecycle.

The project team chose HTML4 to ensure multiple browser compatibility and used JavaScript to design the evaluation system to fully run the browser and to require accurate response time. The front-end of the application runs in the Windows Azure Web role, with IIS7 preconfigured to ensure rapid development and deployment of Web applications, and with popular technologies such as ASP.net, PHP, and Node.js. The data store is jointly provided by Windows Azure Blob Storage, Windows Azure Table Storage, and Windows Azure SQL database.

In early March, the project team made a full-featured evaluation system running on Windows Azure and completed the precise alignment by mid-April. We are now using it to collect the clinical data needed to prepare the final component code for the evaluation system: The Analysis engine examines the individual's results and records them. We look forward to releasing our online memory assessment system this autumn.

HKS: How do you deal with the clinical test of your solution?

MM: By thinking creatively, we avoid typical challenges, such as finding enough willing test subjects. Volunteers who get clinical research often spend a lot of money and time; a good hospital is lucky enough to get some volunteers a week. We took a different approach to the big media, the target group is 40-80 years old, to help people who want to help us to "make a difference". We received more than 1000 volunteers in the first four days of the start, and people are looking forward to the topic we are working on.

HKS: How does online memory evaluation work?

MM: After registering anonymously, people will be given seven exercises each lasting a few minutes. The two cognitive domains that have been validated in the laboratory as the most affected by age are good indicators: attention and memory. The results of the tests will be used to produce an overall assessment of the human brain's health status. Age and educational background are also counted. Subsequent personalized reports will be submitted to the tester immediately, and the test report will answer the question: "Is my memory normal?" Should see a doctor. ”。

The reappearance of memory evaluation as a mental thermometer. When we feel unwell, most of us use a thermometer to help us determine whether the temperature is too high and then ask a doctor. In the same way, online memory evaluations help us understand whether our memories are aging properly or we need to see a doctor.

HKS: What do most people expect from the completion of online memory evaluations and what will they do to find out what they are going to do?

MM: I expect most testers to fall into the "anxious but healthy" category, and people with healthy brains associate us with the fact that we tend to forget about our aging. For these people, we want them and their families to feel at ease. If the results go beyond age and the normal education, evaluation will provide a clear, step-by-step approach to how to better prepare for a doctor. Good preparation will make the doctor's diagnosis faster and better, which is exactly what most patients need.

HKS: What kind of business opportunities do you see for this solution?

MM: We are evaluating business models, including establishing partners for health-related websites. We have also seen opportunities with large companies and government departments to help address productivity losses by using its evaluation. According to Canada's 18 million-member workforce, the Brain Health Association estimates that 500,000 people are absent from their brain health problems every year. This is the biggest cause of sick leave, which costs 51 billion of dollars a year.

To apply to doctors ' offices and other areas of brain health, such as depression and anxiety, we also envision expanding our online evaluation model. Online evaluations even provide benchmarks for children's cognitive abilities, in cases of accidents or exercise-related injuries, where children can be reassessed for baseline comparisons to determine whether there is a potential brain injury.

HKS: Please talk about the technical benefits of using Windows Azure.

MM: By building on Windows Azure, we avoided huge upfront investments. We don't need to buy any hardware, build or rent a data center, or spend money on deploying and configuring the server. It is attractive to be able to pay for IT infrastructure that exceeds the operating capital, especially in the face of shrinking capital. We avoid buying hardware and we don't have to spend money to manage it or invest extra capacity before we apply it. With Windows Azure, we can simply pay on demand as we move our online memory assessment and future products to market, expanding on demand.

We can easily shrink his application to any size. Windows Azure gives us a fully automated Self-Service supervisor and management environment, so we can easily provide or revoke computer resources within minutes. In addition, Windows Azure is available in all of the world's data centers, and we can deploy our applications close to customers and partners. Because we move to a global federated model, we don't have to worry about being able to hold higher than expected requirements or scale to global levels as we run on Windows Azure.

We also benefit from the start to end of IT infrastructure. Workloads are automatically moved in Windows Azure to support automated operating system and service patching, with built-in Network Load balancing and failover to provide repair capabilities in the case of hardware failure.

HKS: What about business benefits?

MM: We use Windows Azure to focus on developing our online assessment system to meet the needs of our clinical teams and consumers-without using technical resources for deployment and configuration hardware. When we collect anonymous data from an online evaluation system, we can use Windows Azure to store this information cost-effectively. We can also use Windows Azure's built-in reporting capabilities and High-performance computing capabilities to analyze the data we collect to help drive online memory assessment systems to continue to improve.

As the burden of the health care system continues to grow, and as more and more babies grow older, brain health problems affect us all. Windows Azure helps us "change the rules of the game" and will painless extend its delivery to a global level through fast, cost-effective delivery of clinically effective online assessment systems for memory impairment.