Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to prepare the NHS to use disease-modifying treatments for dementia before their potential approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

NHS England has a proactive national dementia programme in place and is monitoring international trial data with great interest, including studies looking into new ways of more easily diagnosing dementia at an earlier stage.

Any decision on the potential scale of testing infrastructure and workforce to support the administration of new treatments will take account numerous factors. This includes the quality of trial evidence to emerge that supports a future licence in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, and if it is subsequently determined by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to be a clinically and cost-effective NHS treatment option.