Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential to scale up investment in dementia clinical trials, including through the Dementia Goals Programme.

Government responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department for Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

The Department for Health and Social Care is committed to ensuring that all patients, including those with dementia, have access to cutting-edge clinical trials and innovative, lifesaving treatments. Government funding is already enabling the dementia clinical trials landscape to become more efficient and accessible.

The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme, with up to £150 million expected to be allocated to, or aligned with it, aims to speed up the development of new treatments for dementia and neurodegenerative conditions by accelerating innovations in biomarkers, clinical trials, and implementation.

Closely aligned to the programme, the NIHR has invested up to £50 million into the UK Demetia Trials Network (UKDTN). UKDTN aims to expand the United Kingdom’s early phase clinical trial capabilities in dementia by addressing industry challenges around trial recruitment and fragmented research infrastructure. The UKDTN will establish a coordinated network of over 20 trial sites, with a real-time database to enable efficient identification of trial sites for industry collaboration. The network will also build a skilled workforce of dementia trial specialists, including early-career researchers, and embedded research nurses to support trial set-up and delivery.

In addition, the Medical Research Council’s £20 million investment into a Dementia Trials Accelerator aims to embed more innovation in how clinical trials are designed and delivered in order to increase the speed and quality, while driving down the cost of large-scale trials.

In partnership with Alzheimer’s Society, Alzheimer’s Research UK, and Alzheimer Scotland, the NIHR also delivers Join Dementia Research, an online platform which enables the involvement of people with and without a dementia diagnosis, as well as carers, to take part in a range of important research, including studies evaluating potential treatments for dementia. As of March 2026, over 110,000 participants have joined dementia research through the service, with 112 studies currently open.