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  • Perspective
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The Digitized Memory Clinic

Nature Reviews Neurology volume 20, pages 738–746 (2024)Cite this article

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Abstract

Several major challenges, including an ageing population and declining workforce and the implementation of recent breakthrough therapies for Alzheimer disease, are prompting a necessary rethink of how people with neurodegenerative dementias are diagnosed and medically managed. Digital health technologies could play a pivotal part in this transformation, with new advances enabling the collection of millions of data points from a single individual. Possible applications include unobtrusive monitoring that aids early detection of disease and artificial intelligence-based health advice. To translate these advances to meaningful benefits for people living with a disease, technologies must be implemented within a system that retains the physician expert as a central figure in decision-making. This Perspective presents a new framework, termed the Digitized Memory Clinic, for the diagnostic pathway of neurodegenerative dementias that incorporates digital health technologies with currently available assessment tools, such as fluid and imaging biomarkers, in an interplay with the physician. The Digitized Memory Clinic will manage people across the entire disease spectrum, from the detection of risk factors for cognitive decline and the earliest symptoms to dementia, and will replace the present paradigm of a pure ‘brick-and-mortar’ memory clinic. Important ethical, legal and societal barriers associated with the implementation of digital health technologies in memory clinics need to be addressed. The envisioned Digitized Memory Clinic aims to improve diagnostics and enable precise disease-tracking prognostication for individuals with memory disorders and to open new possibilities, such as precision medicine for prevention and treatment.

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Fig. 1: Abundant digital health technologies exist that could be incorporated in the Digitized Memory Clinic.
Fig. 2: The Digitized Memory Clinic.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Dementia Research Centre, Department of Neurology, Copenhagen University Hospital – Rigshospitalet, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Mathias Holsey Gramkow, Gunhild Waldemar & Kristian Steen Frederiksen

  2. Department of Clinical Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Gunhild Waldemar & Kristian Steen Frederiksen

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  1. Mathias Holsey Gramkow
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  2. Gunhild Waldemar
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  3. Kristian Steen Frederiksen
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Correspondence to Mathias Holsey Gramkow.

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Nature Reviews Neurology thanks Wiesje van der Flier, Bianca Brijnath, Tiia Ngandu and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Gramkow, M.H., Waldemar, G. & Frederiksen, K.S. The Digitized Memory Clinic. Nat Rev Neurol 20, 738–746 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-024-01033-y

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