On 24 March, the UK charity Alzheimer’s Research UK announced a new partnership with Boston University Alzheimer's Disease Center (BU ADRC). Alzheimer’s Research UK is leading the Early Detection of Neurodegenerative diseases (EDoN) project to develop an innovative approach to detect conditions like Alzheimer’s disease (AD) years before the symptoms of dementia start. The project is funded by Alzheimer’s research UK, Bill Gates and Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation, bringing together 11 project partners with a track record in data science, clinical and neurodegenerative research.
EDoN will leverage on smartphone apps as well as the more and more used wearables (including smart watches & headbands) to collect data from up to 50,000 people. The collection focusses on measures such as sleep, neural activity, cognition, speech and language, gait, heart rate, fine motor skills but also physical activity. In addition, the project will also leverage on already collected data. After the collection and transfer of the data, project partners aim to validate the information using clinical data (such as brain scans).
As part of the new partnership, BU ADRC will support data collection and engage up to 200 participants (with and without dementia) who will use wearables (as well as two smartphone apps) the data will then be shared with researchers from the EDoN project.
By doing so, the team hopes to be able to develop robust machine learning models that recognise patterns which indicate potential early stages of conditions like AD. If they are to succeed, the partners aim to develop a toolkit that will enable doctors to apply the most promising measures in their daily practice to identify the people with the highest risk of developing symptoms in future. Ultimately, the consortium plans to test its final digital device in up to 1million people through health checks, beforehand.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2021-03/aru-cys032421.php
