Creyos Cognitive Exam Validity
The Creyos cognitive exam is not mentioned in current Alzheimer's Association guidelines or validated cognitive assessment literature, and therefore cannot be recommended as a diagnostic tool for cognitive impairment. 1
Evidence-Based Validated Instruments
The 2025 Alzheimer's Association clinical practice guidelines provide explicit recommendations for validated cognitive screening instruments, and Creyos is notably absent from this comprehensive review. 1
Recommended Validated Tools Include:
For Primary Care Settings:
- Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA): 90% sensitivity and 87% specificity at cutoff of 26/30 2
- Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE): extensively validated but requires licensing 1, 3
- Memory Impairment Screen (MIS): adequate test performance for dementia detection 4, 3
- Clock Drawing Test: publicly available with adequate diagnostic accuracy 3
- Mini-Cog: validated in multiple studies 3
For Specialty Care:
- MoCA (preferred for MCI detection with better accuracy than MMSE) 1, 5
- Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination (ACE-III): 72% specificity, 77% sensitivity 6
- Rowland Universal Dementia Assessment 1
Critical Validation Requirements
A cognitive screening tool must demonstrate:
- Published diagnostic accuracy data (sensitivity/specificity) 3, 6
- Validation against clinical diagnosis or gold standard 1
- Evaluation in systematic reviews 1, 3
- Normative data across diverse populations 1
- Test-retest reliability (e.g., MoCA-22 ICC = .92) 7
Clinical Practice Implications
The Alzheimer's Association guidelines explicitly state that cognitive test scores should never be interpreted in isolation but must be integrated with comprehensive clinical assessment. 1, 2 Even validated instruments are screening tools, not diagnostic tests. 2
Common Pitfalls to Avoid:
- Using non-validated instruments that lack published diagnostic accuracy data 1
- Diagnosing based on test scores alone without clinical correlation 2
- Ignoring education level adjustments (patients with <4 years education require MoCA-B variant) 1, 2
- Failing to obtain informant history, which improves detection accuracy beyond cognitive testing alone 4
Telemedicine Adaptations
For remote assessment, validated instruments have been specifically adapted and re-validated for telephone or video administration, including Telephone MoCA and MoCA-B variants. 1 Any cognitive tool used remotely requires validation data for that specific administration format. 1
Bottom line: Use only instruments with published validation data that appear in evidence-based guidelines—MoCA is the current gold standard for MCI detection in clinical practice. 1, 5, 2