Tackling Dementia with Head4Change
Written by: Sally Tucker, Head for Change Trustee
One of the things we at Head for Change have learned in our short existence is that there are many ideas aimed at advancing knowledge and assisting patients within the neurodegenerative disease sphere, but not every idea has a sound scientific base. One of my roles as a Trustee of Head for Change, and the resident doctor on the board, is to review those ideas with which we are approached and seek to understand whether there is medical evidence and value in them.
We were approached by Mindset following our launch and I met with the creators of Mindset to learn about their work, in particular their Mindset4Dementia app, which has filled us with intrigue. After reviewing the app and its capabilities we were delighted to partner with Mindset and wanted to share details of it with you.
Mindset has been established by young medics linked to UCL and Imperial College London, overseen by leading experts in the field of neurodegenerative disease. They have built the app Mindset4dementia which aims to understand more about the early signs of dementia so that we can be better informed about symptoms, diagnosis and ultimately revolutionise how we manage and care for people affected.
The Mindset4dementia app is downloaded onto your phone, and takes you through a series of anonymised questions and tests of brain function, including tests using augmented reality. The aim is to gather results from as many people as possible, regardless of age and health status, and this information is then used to inform the technology to understand the brain better.
The app uses artificial intelligence to find patterns in the risk factors, symptoms and the results of brain testing, in healthy people as well as those who develop dementia. The more data gathered, the more information will be available to analyse, and hopefully the more accurate the information will become. Ultimately this information will be useful for determining the very early signs of cognitive change, helping us to better understand risk factors for dementia, learn the accuracy of types of brain testing and helping us to direct people to services early so that they can receive the medical help they need.
If this technology can be accessed easily and remotely through an app, we can start to develop services around this to help patients with disease. Mindset is exciting to us as it is at the forefront of advancing medical technology, using artificial intelligence to help pave the way for the future of neurodegenerative disease research and management.
Sports people affected by neurogenerative disease are a group who require much more research to be done in order for us to better understand their needs. Working with Mindset not only assists with our aim to help our group of sportspeople but will also support the bigger picture of understanding neurodegenerative disease as a whole.
We at Head for Change are delighted to partner with Mindset4Dementia and to do all that we can to promote the app to those who are interested in the work of our charity. To have Mindset come onboard as the sponsor of our inaugural Rugby Ride challenge helped us to make a success of our first fundraising event and also shared the app with our social media followers and supporters.
Alix Popham, as one of the founders of Head for Change and one of the players affected by brain injury sustained during his professional rugby career, was involved in the launch activity for Mindset4Dementia. Indeed, the whole Head for Change team recognises that the more that we can learn about how dementia develops in the brain, the better placed researchers will be to develop treatments which will slow cognitive decline and — one day we hope — will allow us to prevent and successfully treat it.
Please do take a moment to download Mindset4Dementia free from the Apple store and play your part in the quest to understand more about dementia.
Sally Tucker
Head for Change Trustee
