In the United States, first-year college students imagined an application for smartphones, Remember Me, in order to help Alzheimer’s patients recognising their relatives.

In Tunisia, Samsung and Tunisian agency 3SG BBDO developed the Backup Memory Project, which is another type of application, so that patients could easily remember their close circle.

Remember me: an application to improve your memory

Annie Grainer is one of the students who created the project; she found out that her grandfather was suffering from the Alzheimer disease. Very quickly, he started suffering from severe memory impairments and forgetting his granddaughter’s name. “We prepared a photo album for him. He has 36 grandchildren, but all he could remember were his own children’s names”, the student said to the Huffington Post.

As a response, Annie and her colleagues created a smartphone application they called “Remember Me”. Thanks to facial recognition technology, people suffering from the Alzheimer disease can easily recognize all family members around them. The patient uses their smartphone’s camera in order to access different information regarding a certain person in front of them such as their name, age, relationship or even photos.

This project was revealed at Verizon Innovative App Challenge.

The Backup Memory Project: a smartphone application for Alzheimer’s patients

To help Alzheimer’s patients, Samsung and the Tunisian agency 3SG BBDO launched the Backup Memory Project. It is a smartphone application for patients to remember their friends and family.

How does it work? Backup Memory Project operates with atracking system: a digital platform makes a link between the patient profile and those of his friends or family. So, when a relative comes close enough to the patient, the application identifies them and will send live notifications, like his name or relation bound, with pictures and videos. In this way, the patient’s memory is stimulated and bring back memories.

A way to preserve social link

These applications are a non-medical therapy for Alzheimer’s patients to keep in touch with their friends and family. Ill people tend to isolate themselves and their communication habits usually decline. With these applications, patients not only regain self-confidence but can also sustain a more intense social activity. The main goal of these programs is to anticipate the cognitive decline by stimulating the patient’s memory.

Backup Memory Project by Samsung (video)