Dementia and neurodegenerative diseases affected 14 million people in Europe in 2019, and they are one of the leading causes of dependency and disability among older people. Since 2000 there has been an increase in deaths caused by Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, yet 65% of health care professionals and 80% of the general public think that dementia is a normal part of ageing.
New innovative technologies and therapies could help to diagnose Alzheimer’s disease faster, understand it better, and slow or even halt its progress. Public-private partnerships are a key vehicle to transform cutting-edge scientific knowledge into concrete patient outcomes.
The Innovative Medicines Initiative has funded more than 20 projects so far that are tackling Alzheimer’s disease, and the Innovative Health Initiative is following in those footsteps. The workshop examined how the public-private partnership model has worked in various IMI and IHI projects, and identified hot topics and key areas where public-private research could have an impact in the future, building on what has been delivered so far.