This 75-minute webinar features presentations and conversations around innovations in post-diagnosis support, care and treatments.
As a follow up to the launch event and panel discussion for the World Alzheimer Report 2022, this session provided a more in-depth focus on current and future innovations in post-diagnosis support, with conversations around existing barriers, recommendations for healthcare professionals from the shared lived experience, considerations for low- and middle-income countries, and more.
In the opening of the webinar, moderator ADI CEO Paola Barbarino reiterated the urgency for accessible and available post-diagnosis support, stating: “85% of people living with dementia are NOT accessing post-diagnosis support – they don’t even know it’s there… This is the stark reality we are looking at.“
Following Paola’s introduction and brief overview of the key findings of the World Alzheimer Report 2022, co-lead author Professor Pedro Rosa-Neto of McGill University provided an overview of the relevant content of the report, the staging of dementia and multidomain interventions, including risk reduction, disease-modifying therapies and personalised care. Professor José Morais, another co-lead author of the annual report, followed up by focusing on the content of the report relating to support in a primary care setting, the importance of care planning, empowering informal carers and the need for greater education for health care professionals.
Former CEO of Alzheimer Switzerland, Birgitta Martensson, presented next. Speaking from the perspective of a person living with Alzheimer’s disease, Birgitta emphasised the need for those living with dementia to be at the centre of the decision making process relating to their own care, as well as the importance of a timely diagnosis.
Birgitta said:
The person with dementia should have a more central case in taking decisions for their future life. We talk a lot about carers, which is of course, extremely important but I think it’s just as important that we integrate people with dementia in the discussion – which means an early diagnosis.
During the last half of the webinar, Dr Grazia Dell’Agnello, Associate VP of International Medical Affairs at Eli Lilly and Company, discussed the evolving care pathway for people living with dementia in light of emerging therapies, including the need for accurate diagnoses using biomarkers and personalised disease modifying treatments. Following on from Dr Dell’Agnello, Dr Susan De Santi, Executive Director of External Stakeholder Engagement at Eisai Inc, highlighted the changing therapeutic, diagnostic and monitoring landscape for Alzheimer’s disease and the need to change current care paradigms to accommodate them.
The final speaker for the webinar was Dr Yuda Turana from the School of Medicine and Health Sciences at Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, who concluded the series of post-diagnosis conversations by discussing the results of the World Alzheimer Report and post-diagnostic innovations from the context of low- and middle-income counties.
Following presentations, the panellists took questions from audience members, with questions revolving around clinical trial accessibility in low- and middle-income countries, post-diagnosis support for Young onset dementia and more.
