CaringAI at AAIC 2026: New Research Shows Strong Clinician Agreement with AI-Powered Telephone Cognitive Screening

This week we presented research at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in London, the largest gathering of dementia researchers in the world. Our poster, "Feasibility and Preliminary Validation of a Voice Agent-administered Cognitive Screening Protocol in Healthy and Impaired Older Adults" (abstract 759), covers a real-world evaluation of CaringAI Listen, our telephone-based cognitive assessment platform.

Why this matters

Most cognitive impairment is never caught. Fewer than one in ten expected cases of mild cognitive impairment get identified in primary care, which means roughly 90% go unrecognized. It isn't that clinicians don't care. Primary care is where older adults are seen and where concerns first come up, but there simply isn't room in a packed visit schedule to run a proper screening.

That's the gap CaringAI Listen was built for. It's a conversational voice agent that administers validated cognitive assessments over a regular phone call. Patients don't need an app, a smartphone, or any setup. If they can answer the phone, they can complete a screening.

What the study found

A Certified Dementia Practitioner independently reviewed 68 assessment reports our system generated from telephone screenings of adults 60 and older. In about 80% of cases, the clinician accepted the AI's scoring and triage recommendation without changing anything. Agreement on scores across the underlying cognitive instruments ranged from good to excellent.

One detail we're proud of: these weren't lab conditions. The assessments happened through a mix of in-clinic calls and scheduled outbound calls, the same way the platform runs in actual practices.

"Our mission is to make high-quality cognitive assessment as accessible as a phone call," said Justin Mason, our CEO.

Reaching people research usually misses

The study population was 88% Black/African American. That matters. Black Americans develop Alzheimer's and related dementias at roughly twice the rate of non-Hispanic White peers, yet they have long been underrepresented in cognitive research.

"One of the persistent challenges in cognitive research is that the populations most affected by Alzheimer's and related dementias are often the least represented in the studies designed to help them," said Dr. Stephanie Ruth Young, Assistant Professor of Medical Social Sciences at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

A phone call requires no smartphone skills, no internet access, and no trip to a clinic. Removing those barriers turned out to matter as much for research participation as it does for everyday screening.

What's next

We started CaringAI in 2024 and work with health systems, primary care practices, and accountable care organizations to help identify cognitive impairment earlier and coordinate care for patients and families. This study is an early validation step, and we're already building on it.

You can read the full announcement on Business Wire. If you'd like to see how CaringAI Listen would work in your practice, get in touch at justin.mason@getcaring.ai.