How health tech could help in the early diagnosis of dementia

Dementia is a growing condition, overtaking heart disease, lung cancer and stroke as the leading cause of death in the UK, and Alzheimer's Research UK suggests there are over 209,000 new cases of dementia every year in the UK – roughly equivalent to a new case every three minutes. As life expectancy increases, so the likelihood of people developing dementia has risen – making it a pressing public health concern. Early detection can be difficult, too, as Dr Carol Routledge, director of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, explains. Clinical tools are currently not sensitive enough to diagnose early, and blood tests are "not sufficiently specific" to diagnose the diseases causing dementia. She also points out that PET (positron emission tomography) imaging – a type of brain scanning often used to diagnose dementia – can be prohibitively expensive, making it almost impossible to use as widely as needed.