£80 million challenge targeting faster and better dementia diagnosis launched

The Dementia Challenge

The Dementia Challenge is accelerating the adoption of innovative technologies and practices that will diagnose and predict how the disease will progress.

Nine new technologies, including faster MRI brain scans and a remote cognitive assessment, will be tested in the NHS as part of a government drive to diagnose dementia faster.

Backed by up to £80 million, the goal is for 92% of people to be diagnosed within 18 weeks of a referral, up from around 60% today with diagnosis often taking more than a year.

The projects will undergo real world testing and only get more funding by proving they’re working, speeding up the process of getting what works to patients.

Funded by DBIST via UKRI’s Research & Development Missions Accelerator Programme (R&D MAP) programme, it aims to help people and their families:

• get earlier and more accurate diagnosis of dementia
• better understand what a dementia diagnosis means for their lives

Early diagnosis can reduce the likelihood of emergency hospital admissions and delay the need for greater care support, reducing the impact of dementia on services within the NHS. It may also allow patients to receive treatment sooner, and make informed decisions about work, care, finances and family life.

Reaction

Henry Simmons, Alzheimer Scotland’s Chief Executive, said:

‘Alzheimer Scotland warmly welcomes this significant investment and the ambition behind all nine projects, each exploring worthwhile and innovative ways to improve dementia diagnosis. We are particularly delighted to see Scotland playing such an important part of this programme and fully support the ambition of the University of Edinburgh and NHS Research Scotland, looking at how Scotland’s dementia diagnosis and treatment services can be redesigned to provide faster, better and more consistent diagnosis across the country.

This strongly supports Alzheimer Scotland’s call for Dementia Care Pathway Guarantees, ensuring everyone in Scotland has access to timely, accurate diagnosis following by high-quality care and post diagnostic support. Innovation in diagnosis is moving at pace, and it is vital that Scotland benefits from that progress. This investment is a positive opportunity to help us move towards the consistent, high-quality dementia pathway that people living with dementia and their families and carers deserve.’

UKRI Health Mission Challenge director Andy Hill said:

‘By developing better diagnostic and prognostic tools, we can help people to living with dementia understand and manage their symptoms, get earlier access to treatment and plan for their futures. That will mean better lives for people living with dementia and for their family and carers.

More people die as consequence of dementia than any other disease in the United Kingdom, accounting for almost one in eight deaths. In 2025, over 72,000 people across the UK died from dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease.

“It’s a disease that causes untold suffering for patients and their families. That’s why the dementia is the first condition the UKRI R&D MAP’s Health Mission is focusing on.’

The Projects

Nine projects have been chosen to move into real-world testing in the NHS. Only those that prove they work will go on to further Challenge funding, so funding goes where it makes the biggest difference to patients.

These include:

• redesigning Scotland’s dementia diagnosis and treatment services to provide faster, better quality and more consistent diagnosis across the country, and ‘living labs’ to test new biomarkers and treatments (University of Edinburgh and NHS Research Scotland)
• reducing MRI scan times from 20 minutes to six-to-eight minutes, giving more patients access to diagnostic MRI scans, reducing costs and enhancing patient experience (University College London)
• integrating a digital platform into the NHS that enables people with Mild Cognitive Impairment to monitor changes in their cognitive health (University of Exeter)
• a home-monitoring platform using unobtrusive sensors to allow earlier dementia intervention, personalised care and proactive management (Imperial College London)
• integrating blood-based dementia biomarkers into routine NHS memory services with the aim of improving diagnostic accuracy and maximising the benefit for patients and the NHS (University of Oxford)
• improving the speed, accuracy and accessibility of dementia diagnosis using a 15-minute remote digital cognitive assessment (H2 Cognitive Designs LTD)
• introducing routine obstructive sleep apnoea screening for everyone referred to a Memory Assessment Service to reduce the risk of misdiagnosis of dementia (University of Bristol)
• supporting earlier dementia detection and monitoring by assessing how the brain processes sound via a digital diagnostic tool using a standard home computer and headphones (Queen Mary University of London)
• improving how dementia is diagnosed and treated using an AI-enabled clinical decision support tool that analyses NHS patient datasets to predict how their disease will progress (University of Cambridge)

To deliver the challenge UKRI is partnering with industry, academia, the NHS, MHRA, NICE, the Health Innovation Network and the third sector to identify, develop, validate, and implement clinical interventions and technological innovations for the NHS and social care.

UKRI is adopting a fail-fast approach for this programme, where projects need to achieve results and reach milestones to receive funding so only those showing real promise continue to receive support.

This is a move away from UKRI’s traditional model of awarding single grants for longer term projects, with the aim of ensuring results and impacts are delivered quickly, and the highest-potential projects get ongoing support