NIHR funding of just under £1 million has been awarded for the ABATED (Automated Brain Image Analysis for Timely and Equitable Dementia Diagnosis) project, a three year clinical validation study to evaluate an artificial intelligence technology for interpretation of brain scans.
Researchers hope that this will support earlier and more accurate dementia diagnosis. The project will be conducted in East London memory clinics, serving a particularly diverse and deprived population, to enable evaluation of how the technology might reduce inequalities in dementia diagnosis. Industry partner AINOSTICS has developed technology highly accurate at predicting future development of dementia in research datasets. Project lead Charles Marshall said: This project will be instrumental in levelling up dementia diagnosis in the NHS. We urgently need new technologies to deliver more timely and accurate diagnosis in memory clinics, and to ensure that access to diagnosis is not influenced by ethnicity, postcode or socio-economic status. We hope this will help prepare the NHS to deliver future treatments for dementia as equitably as possible.