The Most Trusted

The Evolution of Cognistat 1979-2017

1979:  Cognistat was developed at the Neurobehavioral Unit of a Stanford University teaching hospital, specifically as a tool for evaluating cognitive disorders.  It answered a need for efficient and time-constrained cognitive assessment.   Cognistat is unique in presenting a Cognitive Status Profile of a patient’s functioning in those cognitive domains known to be sensitive to brain dysfunction.  By not reducing everything to a single number, clinicians are able to use the pattern of abilities and disabilities in their diagnostic considerations.  This dramatically reduces the incidence of false negatives – a common problem with other single-score test instruments.  Cognistat is unique among screening tests in identifying potentially treatable problems and as such Cognistat offers both hope and guidance for patients, family members and clinicians.

1987: The first of over 400 peer-reviewed papers was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. 
https://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/702185/ 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3631786 

1988 – 2017: Cognistat has been translated into Spanish, French, Japanese, Hindi, Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Czech, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hebrew, etc.

2009: Cognistat was adapted for computer use with the development of the Cognistat Assessment System (CAS).  This is a web-based computer-assisted version of Cognistat by providing clinicians with electronic medical records, longitudinal patient data and test administration guidance and advice.  It is an exact copy of the original paper and pencil test.  CAS is clinician administered so that the existing body of validations studies remains intact.

2012: Cognistat Active Form was developed as an adjunct screening instrument for nurse practitioners, military users and clinicians who needed an electronic version of Cognistat but lacked access to the internet.  It was designed to be run on a laptop without the need for web connectivity.

2014: Cognistat Five was developed to fulfill the need for a rapid (i.e. 5 minute) screen for delirium, mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease.  It uses a subset of the original Cognistat subtests and includes a new expert system for risk assessment of MCI called the MCI Index.  It is provided in three formats - a paper test, an non-web based computerized test and a fully web-based system.

2017: CAS-II, a new and more sophisticated version of the Cognistat Assessment System was introduced.  CAS-II offers a new complex algorithm-based expert system for alerting the clinician to concerns during test administration and for highlighting significant patterns of cognitive decline in the test data.