Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve levels of (a) early and (b) accurate diagnosis for dementia; and if he will take steps to help increase the use of (i) blood tests and (ii) AI-driven assessments as diagnostic tools.

We are committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7%, which in England, at the end of February 2025, was 65.4%. To support the implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data on the diagnostic pathway and enable targeted support where needed.

The Department delivers dementia research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR funds a range of research into dementia, for example investing nearly £11 million to develop new digital approaches for the early detection and diagnosis of dementia.

To aid dementia diagnosis and provision of support in care homes, NHS England funded an evidence-based improvement project to fund two trusts in each region (14 sites), to pilot the Diagnosing Advanced Dementia Mandate protocol. Learning is currently being shared and promoted with regional and local partners following an impact assessment of the pilots.

The Government’s Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Goals programme has invested £13 million into three biomarker innovation competitions, which include an AI tool designed to improve the accuracy of blood tests for dementia. Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the NIHR is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge, which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the National Health Service to support improved diagnosis of dementia in the future, if validated for clinical use.