Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what support they are providing for research and development into new diagnostic technologies for dementia, including blood-based biomarker tests.

Government responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered via the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.

The Government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme has invested £13 million into a range of biomarker innovation projects which include a broad range of biomarker technologies, ranging from an artificial intelligence tool designed to improve the accuracy of blood tests for dementia, to using retinal scans to detect early-onset dementia decades before symptoms. Some of these innovations could support improved diagnosis in the future, if validated for clinical use.

Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the NIHR is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the National Health Service to support diagnosis of dementia.

The NIHR has also invested nearly £11 million of funding to develop new digital approaches for the timely detection and diagnosis of dementia. Funded projects include a range of innovative tests such as spatial awareness, image recognition, hearing tests, and monitoring sleep disturbances.

The UK Dementia Research Institute, primarily funded by the Government, aims to increase our basic scientific understanding of dementia and its causes, unlocking pathways to developing ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat the condition. The NIHR is investing £20 million in the UK Dementia Research Institute over four years to enable discoveries to be taken out of the laboratory and into the lives of people that need them.

The NIHR continues to welcome funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including dementia. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.

Welcoming applications on dementia to all NIHR programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of the amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.