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.

As many as 42% of pediatric clinical trials end up in failure and inconclusive results. "That means we don't know one way or the other if a drug works or not," says Aparito founder Elin Haf Davies. This isn't just a problem for the big pharma companies who are spending billions of dollars developing successful studies. It's a problem for you, the patient, who pays a mark up on medication to cover these costs--and for taxpayers supporting healthcare services like the NHS. "Society as a whole is losing out," notes Davies, a former research nurse for medical institutions like London's Great Ormond Street Hospital.