Taipei Medical University Shuang Ho Hospital’s Dementia Center working with the Global Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative

TMU-SHH Dementia Center joins DAC GCD to accelerate the discovery, assessment, and delivery of precision interventions for Alzheimer’s Disease.

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, June 28, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Today the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative (DAC) announces the Taipei Medical University Shuang Ho Hospital (TMU-SHH) Dementia Center is working with the DAC Global Cohort Development program, a groundbreaking data platform to accelerate the discovery, assessment, and delivery of precision interventions for Alzheimer’s Disease.

The DAC Global Cohort Development (GCD) platform is driving scientific discovery by providing researchers access to an extensive, truly international platform populated with brain related health data from broad and diverse populations. It will support AI and machine learning with organized and aggregated data collected from digital devices through research labs, hospitals and even people’s own smartphones. This data resource will help determine the causes, predispositions, and habits for people who develop Alzheimer’s Disease. It may also inform drug discovery and clinical care at a more rapid pace.

The Dementia Cohort at TMU-SHH, led by Dr. Li-Kai Huang, has a rich collection of digital phenotyping data gathered by using a smart phone application. The data includes information processing speed, response accuracy, error detection, and multitasking capacity and vocal patterns, such as speech pitch, tone, rhythm. The cohort includes participants with no symptoms to those with mild dementia.

In addition to the smartphone applications, 400 participants are undergoing additional testing including cognitive abilities screening instrument (CASI), Clinical Dementia Rating (CDR), Cookie Theft Picture Description, Eye Tracking Test, and gait/balance.

One very important conclusion of Dr. Huang’s research is that digital assessment tools can be used for detecting changes in cognitively related behaviors associated with preclinical and early-stage clinical dementia.

Dr. Li-Kai Huang will be presenting “Building the Research Path for Identifying and Validating Cognition-related Digital Biomarkers” at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference (July 31 – August 4, 2022).

“We are excited to be part of the DAC Global Cohort Development program,” said Dr. Shu-Ping Chao, PI of the Dementia Center and Attending Physician, Department of Neurology, Taipei Medical University Shuang-Ho Hospital. “We believe sharing our digital phenotyping success and resulting data with other cohorts will result in faster discovery and assessment of patients leading to global effort to prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.”

“Collaboration and inclusion are essential elements for defeating Alzheimer’s Disease,” said Dr. Rhoda Au, Director of the Global Cohort Development at DAC. “Working in silos with limited representation of participants from across the world is not producing results, either comprehensively enough or fast enough. Past studies have skewed results because of the exclusion of low- and middle- income resourced areas and/or countries. We believe the important work and scientific data from Taipei Medical University Shuang Ho Hospital will further advance our understanding of Alzheimer’s disease.”

Participation
The Global Cohort Development combines the best of science – collaboration, creative thinking, and discovery. Other interested researchers with cohorts that share these objectives are encouraged to apply. Because of the synergistic nature of this work, cohorts with limited resources are put on similar footing with the large research organizations. Supporters are finding this program a cost-effective way to influence the big, new ideas necessary to stem the tide of AD.

About the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative
Initiated in Davos, Switzerland, during the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in 2020, The Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative is a public-private partnership committed to aligning stakeholders with a new vision for our collective global response against the challenges Alzheimer’s presents to patients, caregivers, and healthcare infrastructures. Led by The World Economic Forum (WEF) and The Global CEO Initiative on Alzheimer’s Disease (CEOi) and fueled by a mission of service to the 150 million families and half a billion people inevitably impacted by this disease by 2050, DAC is a collaborative for the benefit of all people, in all places.

Pat Arcand
DAC Global Cohort Development
+1 617-251-7778
parcand@davosalzheimerscollaborative.org