The pandemic pushed our health and social care systems to the limit, creating challenges for patients, families, and staff alike. But the NHS response to Covid also offers a blueprint for how we can react to health emergencies. Now, we must urgently use the lessons learned from Covid to fast-track a national strategy for improving dementia treatment – and tech-based solutions with be critical to this.
Dementia threatens to be one of the world’s gravest post-pandemic health crises, with global cases forecast to exceed 153m by 2050, roughly treble the 57m recorded in 2019.
This is a future with which our current dementia care infrastructure in the UK will be ill-equipped to cope.
Through Covid-19, our health services have learnt the hard way how to deal with a crisis at short notice, and with no known cure for dementia, they must make the most of all the time we have as case numbers continue to climb.
We need a national strategy to treat cognitive challenges such as dementia in a more holistic way – and we need it fast.
Learning the lessons of the pandemic, we should invest in innovative new solutions that can increase the capacity of care services, reduce the pressure on overburdened staff, and drive public awareness of a hitherto misunderstood condition.
Increasing capacity
The threat of case numbers trebling by 2050 looms all the larger given the estimated backlog of 50,000 undiagnosed dementia cases in the UK alone, caused by the hiatus of certain health services during lockdown.
Social-Ability’s research around World Alzheimer’s Day in 2021 found that 82 per cent of people felt the care sector was unequipped to cope with surging demand for its services – and unless we scale up capacity to deal with dementia cases, those 82 per cent will be right.
One solution is to adopt the “Nightingale” approach that saw a rapid rollout of Covid treatment centres across the UK in the early days of the pandemic.
A similarly swift launch of dementia-focused diagnostic units could be transformative for the care system’s capacity to deliver early diagnoses, leading to more effective treatment and better health and wellbeing outcomes for those living with the condition.
Improving public awareness
A rapid and far-reaching public awareness campaign has been a vital component in the fight against Covid, ensuring that the public understands the signs and the symptoms as early as possible.
Worryingly, Social-Ability’s research has found that almost two thirds of people cannot distinguish between the early symptoms of dementia and the natural signs of ageing.
This too is delaying vital diagnoses that could otherwise lead to more effective treatment because public perceptions of dementia mean that 50,000 is likely a conservative estimate of the number of undiagnosed cases in the UK.
Indeed, we need to combat the stereotype of dementia as little more than a memory loss disease.
While 82 per cent of respondents to Social-Ability’s survey cited memory loss as a symptom of the condition, fewer than half, for instance, successfully identified reduced sensitivity to the feelings of others as another.
Clear and simple public education materials, as were deployed throughout Covid, must move higher up the national agenda.
Reducing pressure
Just as GP appointments, PCR results and vaccine passports all moved online during Covid to protect the healthcare system, technology will be critical to reducing the pressure on the dementia care system and its already overburdened staff.
Innovative interactive light technology, for instance, would facilitate a holistic approach to care that priorities the cognitive, social, and mental wellbeing of individuals.
Social-Ability’s Happiness Programme has partnered with care homes across the country to provide interactive activities powered by this technology, supporting sensory stimulation, relaxation, and reminiscence among residents with dementia.
The programme is also proven to reduce both the number of falls people suffer and their reliance on anti-psychotic drugs.
Reducing overmedication is a particularly important benefit of this technology, with these drugs costing the NHS an estimated £250m per year.
And with the national dementia research budget being cut to £75m annually, any innovations that alleviate the sector’s financial burden in the long term will represent an extremely useful investment.
Fast-tracking a national strategy
Of course, the dementia care system could certainly do with an increase rather than a reduction in funding, but a national strategy that makes the most of the resources currently available would still be a significant step in the right direction.
Tech will be crucial to this, in the innovative ways of improving health and wellbeing outcomes among care home residents, as well as in the means of mobilising rapid diagnostic centres across the country.
Covid has taught us that the best way to respond to a crisis is to act early, and this is equally true for the impending dementia epidemic. It is vital that we invest in these innovations, and in education, as soon as possible.
