Tackling Alzheimer’s Disease with Open Innovation
Alzheimer’s is an incurable and fatal disease that affects around 50 million people all over the world. Included in this number are nearly half of individuals who are over 85 years of age.
To accelerate research into treatment and detection and to find a cure, a group known as the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough team is turning to open innovation and crowdsourcing models.
The team comprises more than 100 neurologists, other scientists, and advocates who are frustrated by the slow pace of science. They are hoping to attract a global force of innovators in diverse fields (such as artificial intelligence, precision pharmaceuticals, and video games) and get them to put some considerable thinking time into coming up and developing breakthrough solutions.
The need is an urgent one.
“With unprecedented global aging, unless Alzheimer’s disease is stopped—and stopped soon—it will become the health, social and financial sinkhole of the 21st century,” said Ken Dychtwald, PhD, Founder and CEO of Age Wave, and a founding member of the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough team.
To really get their open innovation endeavor off the ground the Breakthrough team will present their proposal at the XPRIZE Visioneers Summit in early October. They will be up against four other teams also focused on critical global challenges to try and get an XPrize launched to tackle Alzheimer’s.
“By employing global crowdsourcing and harnessing emerging technologies, we are hoping to unleash a new era of interventions and treatments that would have the best chance of saving lives,” commented George Vradenburg, JD, Co-Founder and Chairman of UsAgainstAlzheimer’s and a founding member of the Alzheimer’s Breakthrough team.
For more information, watch the short video below.
Reader Comments
I'm moved to say that this is so uplifting.
As someone loosely involved in the healthcare innovation sector, I'm really hyped by the rapid advances in our niche.
I believe what we have here is a perfect storm of factors;
Several decades of very high quality data, huge advances in the tech and finally (and most importantly) an emerging generation of young innovators who have simply don't understand the meaning of the word 'impossible'...
Exciting times ahead I truly believe.
Posted by Henry Morgan on October 2, 2017
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