Welcome to our August issue of the ADNeT Newsletter. COVID-19 continues to play havoc with everybody’s lives, in particular, for those of us located in Victoria. From a research perspective, COVID has had a deep impact on matters such as our ability to screen patients and coordinate work across state boundaries. Despite this, work continues Read more
News
Murrumbidgee joins Registry
Murrumbidgee Local Health District Aged Care Service has joined the ADNeT Dementia Registry and commenced recruitment and data collection. The Registry has been encouraging participating services to develop local IT solutions that extract data from their hospital information systems directly into the Registry, to streamline data entry and ensure high quality data collection. Murrumbidgee has Read more
Dementia advocates have say on communications
In collaboration with Dementia Australia, the ADNeT Dementia Registry has facilitated two focus groups with dementia advocates (people living with dementia and carers). The purpose of this initiative was to ensure that communications provided to patients and carers about participating in the Dementia Registry incorporates the lived experience voices, and that it was clear, easy Read more
WEBINAR: Helping clinicians navigate patient access to dementia trials
Professors Chris Rowe (ADNeT) and Michael Woodward (Austin Health) will be presenting this interesting one-hour webinar on The clinical value of amyloid PET or CSF and forthcoming P-tau blood tests in the diagnosis of cognitive decline. How to access the ADNeT Screening for Trials program to obtain free amyloid PET and direct your patients to Read more
New dementia therapy trials starting soon
Important new trials to treat and prevent dementia are starting in Australia that give patients access to anti-amyloid antibodies that are proven to clear plaques and appear effective in slowing Alzheimer’s disease. As a result, the ADNeT Screening program has resumed with strict adherence to COVID-19 safety measures. The ADNeT Screening program offers diagnostic certainty Read more
AU-ARROW study into lifestyle interventions to reduce risk of dementia
A recent study in Finland[1] – the Finnish Geriatric Intervention Study to Prevent Cognitive Impairment and Disability (FINGER) – has shown that lifestyle modifications that include adopting a healthy diet, carrying out regular aerobic and resistance physical exercise, staying socially active, and undergoing brain training exercises can improve brain function and reduce the risk of Read more
From Director Chris Rowe
Since our previous newsletter in March, the world suddenly and abruptly changed for all of us, due to COVID-19. Overnight, offices were closed, and isolation and face-to-face contact restrictions were imposed. The impact on research was immediate and dramatic, with all research endeavours (other than COVID-19) put on hold to ensure the safety and well-being Read more
ADNeT Director invited to join Davos Alzheimer’s Collaboration
Professor Chris Rowe has been invited to be part of the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative Global Clinical Trials Working Group in recognition of the success of ADNeT’s national clinical trial screening initiative as well as other activities designed to facilitate a national network of Dementia Clinical Trial sites in collaboration with Dementia Trials Australia. The Davos Read more
Dementia Registry gathers momentum
Despite delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, the roll-out of the ADNeT Dementia Clinical Quality Registry is gathering momentum. As with other clinical quality registries, the purpose of the ADNeT Clinical Registry is to become an effective tool for quality improvement in the diagnosis and care of dementia in Australia by identifying variations in clinical Read more
Can the quality of dementia care be measured?
ADNeT Registry Academic Lead Prof Susannah Ahern has led a Delphi study to develop clinical quality indicators (CQI) to measure the quality of care for dementia and mild cognitive impairment. The study – published online in the Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease[1] – assessed 33 indicators and confirmed a final set of 18. Seven of these quality Read more