Brain health company IXICO today (30 April 2015) launched a digital platform, Project Cygnus, to support patients with the diseases that cause dementia. IXICO is the lead partner in the project, working alongside MRC Technology, The Northern Health Science Alliance Network (NHSA) and several NHS Trusts in the North of England. The project is part-funded by Innovate UK (formerly the Technology Strategy Board).

The goal of the project is to introduce gold-standard integrated dementia care practices in key centres in Northern England by building a collaborative network and a scalable digital platform. It will bring together partners from healthcare and social care, academia, industry, and the charitable sectors and will cover both the diagnosis and post-diagnosis patient pathways. It plans to enhance current practices by either complementing them (e.g. by collecting ‘real world’ patient reported outcomes related to existing interventions), combine existing data into more meaningful and actionable information (e.g. stratification of patients to the most appropriate post-diagnostic treatment and support) or propose new digitally-supported interventions and resources, including Assessa® and MyBrainBook®, IXICO’s digital dementia diagnosis and patient support platform. The project aims to engage approximately 500 people with cognitive impairment and dementia in the study initially. Patient involvement in the research and platform development will contribute to ensuring the study is focused on person-centred care, ultimately supporting people with dementia and their caregivers to live well and independently at home. As well as directly benefiting patients, Cygnus provides an infrastructure to facilitate the development and evaluation of improved treatments and care.

Professor Derek Hill, Chief Executive of IXICO, commented: “Project Cygnus is designed to directly impact the lives of those living with dementia and their carers. It will improve their quality of life, while simultaneously providing a platform that can collect the data needed to support development and evaluation of new and better treatments (drug and non-drug).”

Dr David Pardoe, Head of Growth Projects, MRC Technology, said: “As a charity, MRC Technology strives to work with relevant partners from patient groups, academia and industry to help find solutions where there are unmet patient needs.  Through Cygnus, dementia patients will benefit from our experience in creating the Dementia Consortium and Neurodegeneration Medicines Acceleration Programme.’”