Harnessing Digital Health to Accelerate Progress Against Alzheimer’s

By Rich Carter

During World Alzheimer’s Month, people came together in countries around the globe to raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, battle stigma and ageism, and elevate the stories of those living with the disease. We heard the voice of the global Alzheimer’s community, calling for greater urgency and new solutions against a disease that already affects more than 50 million people worldwide.

For so many of us, this fight is personal. My wife’s grandmother has dementia, and I’ve seen the pain caused by its devastating effects. But like families everywhere, ours has had to navigate Alzheimer’s with few options, tools, or even effective, accessible ways to measure its progression.

The scale of the challenge — and the nature of its impact — demand faster research, more precise innovation, and stronger real-world responses. It’s time to bring all of our resources to bear, including the devices and data that are now ubiquitous in our lives and the advanced technologies already powering insights in every industry and field of research.

Digital health is our tool to do just that. By developing and refining digital health solutions, innovators, researchers, and care teams can accelerate breakthroughs and better support those living with Alzheimer’s. In the process, we can generate lessons and platforms for healthier aging more broadly, including other debilitating diseases where progress has been too slow.

At Eli Lilly and Company, we see tremendous potential in digital health, focusing on two main areas: innovation by using connected clinical trials (CCTs) and creating direct connections with people through technology. Using CCTs, we’re developing digital biomarkers, sensors, and wearables to help measure the effect of our medicines, enable more decentralized research, and speed up therapeutic development. We’re also working to create a bridge between people and health care providers, so their treatment extends beyond the doctor’s office.

The concept of digital biomarkers is at the core of our approach. Each of us has hundreds of indicators of our health status; that’s why when you go to the doctor’s office they take your blood pressure, check your pulse, and test your blood. These are called biomarkers. When we record these indicators using connected electronic devices, they are called digital biomarkers.

Digital biomarkers can be especially useful for complex, progressive diseases like Alzheimer’s. They help researchers understand how the disease is changing over time, as well as how therapies are working — even when someone is outside the clinic. Digital biomarkers can make this information more accessible to people with dementia, health care providers, caregivers, and families, so they can monitor and adjust approaches over time.

As we explore this area, industry collaboration and consensus are imperative. There are hundreds of potential digital biomarkers for Alzheimer’s, from voice recordings and sleep data to digital cognitive tests and questionnaires. That’s why Lilly is working with the Digital Medicine Society, Boston University, Oregon Health & Science University, the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, and other private-sector leaders to identify and refine the most effective digital biomarkers to use in research for Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative conditions.

In addition to using digital biomarkers to learn more about Alzheimer’s, at Lilly we’re exploring more than 20 additional novel digital biomarkers in immunology, diabetes and related complications, and other areas to further understand health challenges — many of which are also related to aging. For example, we have digital biomarkers that measure continuous heartrate, wearable devices to measure sleep, and biomarkers to measure daytime sleepiness. Many of our digital biomarkers will span multiple disease states, whether it’s diabetes, cancer, migraine, or others.

By leveraging technology and biomedicine, we can better understand and improve the health of people as they get older. When our team is developing digital health solutions, we’re focused on how we can support people throughout their treatment and create individualized support programs catering to each person’s needs.

Looking ahead, I remain extremely optimistic about the possible solutions, across our industry, that digital health can deliver for people living with Alzheimer’s — and the insights and platforms for healthier aging overall.

Rich Carter is Vice President, Chief Digital Officer at Eli Lilly and Company.