Dr. Soo Borson and her team at the University of Washington’s Memory Disorders Clinic and Dementia Health Services Research Group created and systematically validated the Mini-Cog© as a simple tool to more easily identify people who might have clinically important, but unrecognized, cognitive impairment.
Today, technical evaluations supported by the National Institute on Aging, the Alzheimer’s Association, the Gerontological Society of America, American Geriatrics Society, the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Center on Early Detection of Dementia, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services all include the Mini-Cog© among valid and reliable tools that can improve detection of cognitive impairment in primary care and other settings.
Clinicians asked for quicker, simpler ways to screen that would fit into short primary care visits. The Mini-Cog© tool Dr. Borson created includes a simple test of short-term memory, because impairment in that area is typical of the most common type of dementia in older people―Alzheimer’s disease.
Knowing that brief memory tests on their own can produce too many false positives, Dr. Borson added clock drawing to the screening. Clock drawing tests executive functions essential to independence and self-care, relying on the coordinated use of several different cognitive skills to draw a clock that looks right and represents the correct time.
Learn more about the doctor who created the Mini-Cog© tool and how it was developed:
About Dr. Soo Borson, Developer of the Mini-Cog©
Soo Borson, M.D., is a physician and researcher specializing in dementia. She is currently co-lead of the Building Our Largest Dementia (BOLD) Center for Early Detection of Dementia, an initiative funded by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and housed at New York University (NYU Langone). She also holds a faculty position as Professor of Clinical Family Medicine in the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.
She formerly directed the Memory Disorders Clinic and Dementia Health Services Research Group at the University of Washington, where she was a Professor in the School of Medicine and a member of the National Institute on Aging-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. It was during her time there that she recognized the need for easily accessible, simple and valid screening tools to make detecting possible dementia easier in diverse settings. She and her team at University of Washington created and systematically validated the Mini-Cog© as a simple tool to improve detection of cognitive impairment.
She formerly directed the Memory Disorders Clinic and Dementia Health Services Research Group at the University of Washington, where she was a Professor in the School of Medicine and a member of the National Institute on Aging-funded Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center. It was during her time there that she recognized the need for easily accessible, simple and valid screening tools to make detecting possible dementia easier in diverse settings. She and her team at University of Washington created and systematically validated the Mini-Cog© as a simple tool to improve detection of cognitive impairment.
Since then, she has worked with many organizations such as the Alzheimer’s Association, Alzheimer’s Foundation of America, Allina Health, Intermountain Health, Health Partners, Kaiser Permanente and the Billings Clinic, and continues to collaborate widely on research and development projects involving dementia detection and cognitive care. She received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and is licensed by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry.
In addition to her research and scholarly work, Dr. Borson has long been committed to person- and family-centered patient care and interprofessional mentoring, teaching and service, with a focus on national and international efforts to improve dementia care quality.