The big takeaway from the recent Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in London is an economic message: Dementia finally has a business model, writes Jason Karlawish.
In the nine years since my last visit to the Docklands’ Excel conference center for the 2017 annual Alzheimer Association International Conference, or AAIC, little of London’s infrastructure has changed. I traveled via the same low-ceilinged, clattering trains with signs advising riders to “mind the gap” and “mind the step.” The center has the same weird jack-o’-lantern-esque façade and forgettable restaurants and hotels. I was even here for the same conference.
Same meeting, in the same place, but what transpired was quite different. In just nine years, how we think about the aging brain has transformed.
One moment captured this. It was a speaker’s remark at a breakfast meeting convened by the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative. The 5-year-old organization describes itself as “uniting leading organizations worldwide to build an innovation ecosystem that will accelerate breakthroughs, develop and scale promising solutions and equip every healthcare system to end Alzheimer’s disease everywhere.”