Over 15,000 patients have now been assessed in the NHS

The recent drive to improve rates of dementia diagnosis has led to record numbers of GP visits and threatens to swamp already stretched memory clinics. However, dementia care experts estimate that 47% of people visiting their doctor with concerns about their memory are likely to be healthy and an additional 15% to have depression and not dementia. Therefore, less than half of patients presenting to primary care worried about their memory should be referred to dementia clinics.

CANTAB Mobile, an automated memory test and depression screen, is now helping over 40 NHS Clinical Commissioning Groups effectively distinguish patients with clinically relevant memory problems such as mild cognitive impairment or Alzheimer’s disease from people with normal memory performance after a single GP visit. This has potential to dramatically reduce diagnostic costs and waiting times, ensuring expert memory services are available to those who need them most and as quickly as possible.

Cambridge Cognition, the company behind CANTAB Mobile, today announced that of the 20,000 patients over the age of 50 who have been tested due to a concern about their memory, 3 in 4 did not have a significant memory problem. For these patients, the instant test results showed they had either a healthy memory for their age or a treatable mood disorder and did not require consultation with their local memory clinics.

The CANTAB Mobile test is a highly sensitive and specific touchscreen assessment of episodic memory, mood and the ability to perform normal daily activities presented on an iPad. The test takes 6-8 minutes and is designed to identify the earliest signs of clinically-relevant memory problems associated with Alzheimer’s disease, enabling healthy patients to be reassured without the need for further appointments or referral to memory clinics.

The test has been used as a best practice memory assessment in pharmaceutical development for over a decade. Now with the increased accessibility of tablet computers such as iPads and advances in mental health research, the technology has been made available and affordable for use in mainstream healthcare.

“CANTAB Mobile is becoming an invaluable front-line tool for healthcare professionals and enables them to create efficient and sustainable patient pathways in the face of increasing demand for dementia testing. By effectively reassuring and filtering out patients not currently at risk of dementia we can reduce the burden on our mental health services and provide better care for all patients” says Dr Andrew Blackwell, Chief Scientific Officer, Cambridge Cognition.

Notes to editors