Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has plans to invest in diagnostic infrastructure for people with dementia.

We committed in 2019 to double funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by 2024/25. This will span all areas of research from causes and prevention to treatment and care, delivering evidence to help prevent, diagnose and treat dementia, enabling the best possible care and quality of life for people with dementia.

NHS England is also working with partner agencies to support and inform further research into other diagnostic modalities, including blood-based biomarker and digital tests, which will help improve identification and management of Alzheimer’s disease.

The National Health Service is a world leader in rolling out innovative treatments, including personalised cancer and life-saving gene therapies, and has established a dedicated programme team to prepare the NHS for the potential arrival of new Alzheimer’s treatments that are approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and determined to be clinically and cost-effective by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.

The team at NHS England are assessing the additional scanning, treating and monitoring capacity which would be required across the country. This includes securing additional diagnostic capacity including magnetic resonance imaging, lumbar puncture, and positron emission tomography and computed tomography.