Caregivers often navigate complex behavioral and communication challenges with limited opportunities for guided practice, making scalable, skills-based training a persistent need in dementia care. This technical report summarizes the 12-month iterative development of VR SIM Carers, an immersive virtual reality (VR) simulation program for caregivers and care partners of people living with dementia. The program delivers psychoeducational content through interactive, first‑person VR scenarios that allow caregivers to practice communication and decision-making in realistic home‑based care situations. The report outlines the user‑centered, iterative development process, key technical and design decisions, and refinements informed by multi‑cohort user testing. As a secondary component of the technical report, pilot user testing with 24 caregivers provided preliminary information on feasibility, acceptability, usability, and tolerability, and helped identify considerations for deploying and refining VR-based caregiver training in clinical and community settings.

Objectives: Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is a debilitating condition occurring in major depressive disorder (MDD) and bipolar II disorder (BP-II). Intermittent theta burst stimulation (iTBS) is an established neuromodulation approach for TRD, but standard delivery requires once-daily sessions over several weeks. Accelerated iTBS (aiTBS) may reduce treatment burden by temporally compressing delivery. We evaluated the implementation, tolerability, and clinical outcomes associated with a 5-day aiTBS schedule for adults experiencing TRD in MDD and BP-II. Methods: In this single-center, open-label, uncontrolled, prospective naturalistic cohort study, adults with MDD or BP-II experiencing TRD received 30 iTBS sessions (600 pulses/session; total 18 000 pulses) over 5 days with 50-minute inter-session intervals. HAMD-17 was assessed at baseline, post-treatment, and 2-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes included Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7), baseline Clinical Global Impression-Severity (CGI-S), post-treatment/follow-up CGI-I, response/remission rates, and adverse events. Longitudinal changes were evaluated using linear mixed-effects models. Results: Forty-six participants contributed longitudinal data (mean age 44.3 years; 54.4% male). HAMD-17 response rates were 28.3% ( n = 13) post-treatment and 37.0% ( n = 17) at follow-up; remission rates were 26.1% ( n = 12) and 32.6% ( n = 15), respectively. Improvements were also observed on PHQ-9 and GAD-7. On CGI-I, 52.2% were rated improved post-treatment and 60.9% at follow-up. The most common adverse event was transient, non-serious stimulation-site pain. Conclusions: The 5-day aiTBS schedule was logistically feasible, well-tolerated, and associated with reductions in depressive and anxiety symptom scores in a real-world TRD cohort. Randomized sham-controlled trials are needed to confirm these findings.

Falls among older adults represent a major public health concern with substantial clinical, societal, and economic implications. People living with dementia (PlwD) are disproportionately affected, reflecting the combined impact of cognitive, motor, and pharmacological vulnerabilities. Traditional fall risk assessment tools have demonstrated limitations in capturing the complex, dynamic risk profiles of people living with dementia, highlighting the need for technological innovation in prediction, detection, and prevention. Despite advances in gerontechnology, evidence specific to dementia remains limited. To address this gap, a scoping review was conducted following PRISMA-ScR and Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines. Comprehensive searches across Scopus, Medline, Embase, APA PsycINFO, and CINAHL identified thirteen peer-reviewed studies (2015–2025) evaluating technology-based approaches for fall prediction, detection, or prevention among people living with dementia or populations used to model dementia-related functional impairments. Data were extracted and synthesized thematically by technological function. Thirteen studies met inclusion criteria, encompassing pressure-sensitive platforms, technology-enabled preventive interventions, wearable inertial measurement units, and ambient radar/vision-based systems, with the latter two most common. Sample sizes ranged from 3-309 participants with varying dementia severity. Wearables demonstrated strong fall detection performance in controlled laboratory settings but were limited by adherence challenges and reduced ecological validity. Ambient and radar-based systems demonstrated feasibility yet raised privacy and scalability concerns. Pressure-sensitive platforms showed promise for identifying pre-fall risk states but lacked clinical validation. Preventive interventions, including tablet-based exercise programs, demonstrated feasibility and preliminary evidence of reduced fall incidence. These technologies demonstrate promise for dementia care but require further validation, attention to usability, and consideration of ethical implementation before widespread adoption. Future work should emphasize dementia-specific trials, cost-effectiveness, and user-centered co-design to support sustainable implementation.