Dimensions of dementia research: from labs to living rooms

Our world is increasingly interconnected and technology allows us to interact with people, objects and devices remotely. New technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are helping us to tackle some of the key challenges that we face. With growing environmental challenges and an ageing population, we need effective solutions to make our living environment more sustainable and develop services to provide better health and care support. I’ll discuss how TIHM (Technology Integrated Health Management) uses AI and connected in-home sensors to help clinicians monitor people with dementia.

Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD) are caused by the death of brain cells, and in order to understand why these cells die and develop new treatments, we need a model of disease that we can study in the lab. To do this, we take skin cells from patients with genetic forms of dementia and convert them into stem cells. Stem cells are special as they can be programmed to become any cell type, including brain cells. This means we can make personalised disease models of disease to understand the disease and ultimately help us to develop allow new treatments for AD and FTD.