As part of a broad-based project by Alzheimer's Research UK, a million British people over the age of 40 will begin wearing special smartwatches designed to help detect early signs of dementia. Over the three years of the planned study, the prototype smartwatches will monitor over thirty potential indicators of dementia, including changes in speech, fine motor skills, memory, and sleep patterns. Researchers are hoping to use the data collected in the study to identify early "fingerprints" that will allow them to predict people at risk for developing dementia later in life. All participants have been recruited by the U.K. government's Accelerating Detection of Disease programme.
In a recent article in the Daily Telegraph, former British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is current president of Alzheimer's Research UK, described the new project as an example of how technology can be use to help dementia sufferers who are "slipping into a world of darkness". "It has an achievable aim: to develop a gadget - a combination of a wearable device and smartphone app - to detect the earliest digital fingerprints of a disease," he wrote. "‘This isn’t some Big Brother intervention. Just as we measure our cholesterol levels to tell us when we need a statin, we need to identify these fingerprints of diseases such as Alzheimer’s to see when we need a statin for the brain.... As prime minister, I was determined to prove this wasn’t an inevitable part of ageing but was being caused by diseases of the brain that can be tackled with research. That’s why I put the issue on the global agenda, through summits such as the G8, and we doubled the research funding at home. And it’s why I made it my focus post-politics."
Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer’s Research UK, stressed the importance of Early Detection of Neurodegenerative diseases (EDoN) technology in detecting diseases in the very early stages. "Our research shows that 85% of UK adults would be willing to take a test that could tell them if they were in the early stages of a disease like Alzheimer’s, even before symptoms show," she said in a recent media interview. "EDoN aims to harness the growing popularity of digital health technology and big data to revolutionise how we develop early tests for these diseases. Developing digital fingerprints that can be detected using phone apps or wearable technologies like smart watches would provide a low-cost approach to identifying those most at risk of disease,” says
Dementia is already the leading cause of death in the U.K. and, in many cases, failure to make a proper diagnosis in the early stages can mean a significant delay in receiving treatment. While there is, at present, no cure for more types of dementia, including Alzheimer's disease, early diagnosis and treatment can help slow down decline and allow people with dementia to remain functioning as long as possible.
The initiative is a collaboration between Alzheimer’s Research UK and organisations including the Alan Turing Institute, University College London, and Newcastle, Exeter and Cambridge universities. Partially sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the project hopes to secure at least £67 million in funding in the first six years and up to £100 million by 2030.
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