Transition from physical to virtual visit format for a longitudinal brain aging study, in response to the Covid‐19 pandemic. Operationalizing adaptive methods and challenges

Abstract

Abstract The COVID‐19 pandemic necessitated adaptations to standard operations and management of clinical studies, after lockdown measures put in place by several governments to reduce the spread of SARS‐COV‐2. In this paper, we describe our telehealth strategy developed for transitioning our dementia prevention clinical observational prospective study from face‐to‐face visits to virtual visits, to ensure the ongoing collection of longitudinal data. We share the lessons learned in terms of challenges experienced and solutions implemented to achieve successful administration of study assessments. Our methods will be useful for informing longitudinal observational or interventional studies that require a feasible model for remote data collection, in cognitively unimpaired adults.

Keywords

• COVID‐19 pandemic
• longitudinal studies
• preclinical Alzheimer's disease
• telehealth
• virtual visit