The European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia (EPAD) Consortium was an interdisciplinary research programme, partially funded by the European Union (EU), that ran between January 2015 and October 2020. In November 2020, the Consortium published their data, samples and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) online. These can be requested online on their webpage.
EPAD’s objectives were to prevent the disease by identifying and diagnosing it before symptoms appeared, and to research new preventive treatments. As the programme began, it was known that Alzheimer Dementia appeared decades before its symptoms. However, the difficulty in diagnosing the disease is that doctors and researchers know very little about its early stages and about the people who are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s Dementia.
To support research in this area, the EPAD project established a Longitudinal Cohort Study with 2,000 participants. The data from this study has been made available online so that researchers from across the globe can make use of it. The data has been anonymised and thus, cannot be traced back to an individual person. To access the data, an online request needs to be made first on their website.
In the research, 2 096 participants were screened. Of these subjects 1 596 came for the six-month visit, 1 225 came to the one-year visit, 421 came to the two-year visit, and 121 to the three-year visit. Their data, samples and MRI scans are available online.
The Advanced Technology for Industry (ATI) project has recently published the Sectoral Watch on Technological trends in the medical devices industry and related healthcare. This report underlines the transformation of the healthcare industry with digital technologies, artificial intelligence, connected devices and data, enabling the development of new solutions.