Most older Americans and their caregivers are willing to try telemedicine, such as a video visit via Skype or FaceTime to discuss medications, reports the Chicago Tribune . Nearly 9 in 10 adults ages 40 and over would be comfortable using at least one type of virtual healthcare for themselves or an aging loved one, according to a new survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Telemedicine also offers convenience to older adults who have chronic illnesses or mobility problems that make it difficult to even reach a doctor's office. There are concerns, however. About one-third of respondents worry about privacy or the security or health information, and roughly half fear that telemedicine could lead to lower-quality care, the poll shows. Insurance coverage is also an obstacle, as Medicare tightly restricts what it will pay for. Congress did recently pass a law expanding Medicare coverage for such options as video visits to diagnose stroke symptoms or check on home dialysis patients. In addition, Medicare Advantage programs used by one-third of beneficiaries can start offering additional telehealth options. "While the interest is huge, one of the big barriers remains reimbursement," said Johns Hopkins University telemedicine chief Dr. Ingrid Zimmer-Galler, who has turned to grants to help fund such services as telepsychiatry for people with dementia. The new law "is really a huge step in the right direction."

The U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Institute on Aging (NIA) 2018 Alzheimer's Disease Research Summit highlighted precision medicine in Alzheimer's disease, with NIA's Eliezer Masliah stressing, "we need to start differentiating people with Alzheimer's based on genetics, environmental exposure, and clinical history," reports MedPage Today . Experts at the event suggested recommendations to direct future research in Alzheimer's and related dementias, based on frameworks developed in 2012 and 2015. Attendees talked about research concerning neurotrophic growth factor, brain-derived neurotrophic factor gene therapy, neuroprotective effects of allopregnanolone, the brain-gut microbiota axis in Alzheimer's, and studies into the MIND diet and cognitive decline, as well as the EXERT trial of exercise in people with mild memory difficulties. Masliah said data sharing will be essential to the development of precision medicine in Alzheimer's. He noted that multidimensional comprehension of the disease requires more than "one person working in isolation in a lab. We need tremendous sharing of data among many, many different groups according to precision medicine ideals. Open access is a very important component."

A new Tork survey demonstrates the importance of lunch breaks, which are a rare occurrence in the North American workplace, reports Forbes . About a fifth of polled North American workers are concerned their bosses will think they are not productive if they take regular lunch breaks, and 13 percent worry co-workers will judge them negatively. In addition, nearly two-fifths do not feel they are encouraged to take lunch breaks, and 22 percent of North American bosses think employees who take a regular lunch break are less hardworking. Furthermore, almost 90 percent of North American employees say taking a lunch break helps them feel revitalized and ready to return to work. Among the wellness and performance benefits of regular breaks are higher productivity, improved mental well-being and mitigation of stress, better creativity, and additional time to practice healthy habits such as diet, exercise, meditation, or self-care. The survey also found employees who take daily lunch breaks feel more valued by their employer, and 81 percent have a strong desire to be an active member in their organization. North American workers who take a lunch break every day scored higher on various engagement metrics, such as job satisfaction, likelihood to continue working at the same company, and probability to recommend their employer to others.

Walmart announced Wednesday that it will start subsidizing the cost of higher education for its employees who have yet to earn a college degree, reports CNBC . Effective immediately, they will be able to enroll and study at either the University of Florida, Brandman University, or Bellevue University. To make this possible, the nation's largest private employer is partnering with Guild Education, a tuition reimbursement and education platform that helps big employers extend education benefits to their workers. News of this program comes as many businesses in the United States face a tighter labor market, and competition for the best talent is intensifying. Such chains as Chipotle and Starbucks have begun offering similar education perks to get workers to remain longer.

Researchers from the University of Southern California project that between 2012 and 2060, the number of Latinos in the United States with Alzheimer's will rise 832 percent to exceed 3.5 million, reports the Chicago Tribune . Experts say Latinos with Alzheimer's are less likely to seek formal treatment, often due to financial impediments, as well as language and cultural obstacles. Rush University scientists led by David X. Marquez are conducting research on Alzheimer's risk factors in older Latino adults. Researchers have been visiting the homes of the nearly 200 adults enrolled in the study for about 30 months, sampling blood and conducting surveys about lifestyle, behavior, and background. Participants must not have already received a dementia diagnosis, and are also requested to consider donating their brains at the time of death for further study. "Over time, we will hopefully be able to see what are those factors that protect Latinos from getting Alzheimer's disease and what are those that might put Latinos at more risk for Alzheimer's disease," Marquez says.

A study published in npj Digital Medicine details how Duke University and Microsoft researchers have mined data on the physical movements of computer users stemming from more than 31 million internet searches over 18 months, using artificial intelligence to associate certain behaviors with Parkinson's disease, reports the Wall Street Journal . Physicians think zeroing in on digital biomarkers could be especially helpful for brain disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. About 700 of the user queries on the Bing search engine sought out Parkinson's symptoms, while the rest were the control cohort. Duke's Murali Doraiswamy says the next stage is to test the digital metric yielded from the Bing study to see if it would correlate with the computer logs of people already diagnosed with Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. He notes the Microsoft researchers were able to analyze the data after it was anonymized. Meanwhile, a 2017 study published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease followed 110 healthy seniors for up to three years and six months as they performed a weekly online health survey. Twenty-nine developed mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and these subjects took longer to complete the survey. A 2015 study published in Alzheimer's & Dementia tracked the mouse usage of 42 seniors, and determined the 20 with MCI made fewer mouse movements and had longer pauses between movements.

A review of 98 randomized clinical trials published in Neurology: Clinical Practice suggests an average 52 hours of exercise over six months may optimize cognitive improvement in older adults, reports MedPage Today . That translates into about 60 minutes of exercise three times a week, say the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine's Joyce Gomes-Osman and colleagues. "The constructs of cognition that were most amenable to exercise were processing speed and executive function," Gomes-Osman notes. "This is an encouraging result because those two constructs are among the first that start to go with the aging process." Gomes-Osman's team reviewed 4,612 relevant studies, and included 98 trials with 11,061 participants. Subjects were 73 years old on average and 67.58 percent were female. Of the total sample, 59.41 percent were healthy older adults, while 25.74 percent had mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and 14.85 percent had dementia. Most studies used either high- or medium-intensity exercise. Aerobic exercise, strength training, mind-body exercises, and combinations of exercises were all associated with improved cognitive skills in both healthy participants and those with MCI. Only the total length of time over a six-month period was connected to better cognitive skills, not weekly exercise minutes. Most participants did not exercise regularly prior to trial, so Gomes-Osman says this data also "strongly supports that decreasing sedentary behavior is something associated with brain health."

The U.S. Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection and the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network will hold a June 7 webcast calling for coordination among financial institutions, law enforcement, and adult protective service agencies to protect seniors from financial abuse, reports ThinkAdvisor . To be discussed are issues that were part of a joint memorandum the organizations previously released, highlighting the value of suspicious activity reports and how they may aid law enforcement's probe of such fraud. "The illegal or improper use of an older person's funds, property, or assets" is the "most common form of senior abuse in the United States," asserts the memo. However, the statement notes only a small number of incidents are identified and reported. "Older Americans are attractive targets in part because of their assets and regular sources of income, increasing the need for effective interventions," says the memo. "Older people may also be particularly vulnerable due to factors such as isolation, cognitive decline, physical disability, health problems, and bereavement. Thus, their ability to protect themselves from individuals seeking to exploit them may be limited."

A proposed class action lawsuit claiming Facebook's ad placement algorithm disproportionately directs ads to younger workers at the exclusion of older workers has been expanded to cite additional firms, reports Bloomberg . The Communications Workers of America (CWA) added claims under California's fair employment and unfair competition ordinances to the lawsuit. CWA also argues that Facebook's algorithm further factors in age when ascertaining which users among the population selected by the advertiser will actually view the ad. Federal law offers immunity for internet platforms serving as "passive conduits" of information, and the amount of discretion Facebook uses in posting ads based on user age could be a critical issue in the CWA suit. An appeals court ruled earlier that the immunity law does not protect a company which "contributes materially to the alleged illegality of the conduct." Concern over targeted online advertising has attracted the scrutiny of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging, whose bipartisan leaders requested Facebook turn over information, including how many jobs have been advertised on the social network for the past five years using age-specific ads, and what age criteria were employed. "The same types of discrimination issues that you would see in traditional hiring are now just being transferred over to the platforms," says Cornell University's Ifeoma Ajunwa. "You could even argue that the new way, using platforms, is worse, because it's more solidified — there's no wiggle room, there's no accidental meetings."

A variety of emerging technologies have the potential to help people with dementia maintain their social circle and family contacts, reports the Wall Street Journal . "Technology has the potential to help preserve independence, or at least maintain it, for many, many more years than is currently possible," says Duke University's Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy. "Ultimately we want nursing communities to disappear. We want people to live peacefully in their own home." Products currently available include remote-home-surveillance systems that enable basic monitoring of persons using a mobile phone. For example, wrist-worn motion detectors and global-positioning system devices can help track a person's in-home activities, and could potentially help with detecting falls or pinpoint a person who wanders out and becomes lost. Meanwhile, University of Montreal Professor Nathalie Bier's team is designing smart homes by outfitting residences with off-the-shelf Z-wave wireless sensors in nearly invisible locations. Bier's group also is working on a smart pillbox that can reveal whether someone is taking their medication. "It's really trying to provide the right service for the right person at the right time," Bier says. Tablet computers are another product of interest, with Bier's team conducting experiments which suggest people with dementia can use tablets to adhere to schedules and orient themselves to the correct date.