Data and Alzheimer’s Testing with Rhoda Au

Data Today with Dan Klein

According to Alzheimer's Disease International, the number of people around the world with the condition will reach 78 million in 2030, and 139 million in 2050. As of 2024, there is no known cure for Alzheimer's, dementia, or similar degenerative brain conditions. So, how are those testing for these diseases using data and technology to help improve health outcomes?

Today’s guest is Rhoda Au, Professor of Anatomy & Neurobiology, Neurology, and Epidemiology at Boston University, and Director of Neuropsychology at the Framingham Heart Study. She’s also the Director of Global Cohort Development at the Davos Alzheimer's Collaborative.

We discuss Rhoda’s experience of paper-and-pen Alzheimer's testing in the early 90s, her switch to voice capture in 2005, and her thoughts about how medical data should be shared.

00:00 - Intro

02:02 - The pen-and-paper days of Altizmer’s testing

12:34 - The ethics of voice capture

20:20 - Why we need to open up health data to the community

26:07 - Dan's final thoughts

LINKS:

Rhoda Au: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rhoda-au-1687277/

Boston University School of Medicine & Public Health: https://www.bu.edu/sph/

Framingham Heart Study: https://www.framinghamheartstudy.org/

Alzheimer's Disease International: https://www.alzint.org/

Alzheimer's Disease Data Initiative: https://www.alzheimersdata.org/

Dan Klein: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/dplklein

Zühlke: https://www.zuehlke.com/en

Welcome to Data Today, a podcast from Zühlke.

We're living in a world of opportunities. But to fully realise them, we have to reshape the way we innovate.

We need to stop siloing data, ring-fencing knowledge and looking at traditional value chains. And that's what this podcast is about. Every two weeks, we’re taking a look at data outside the box to see how amazing individuals from disparate fields and industries are transforming the way they work with data, the challenges they are overcoming, and what we can all learn from them.

Zühlke is a global innovation service provider. We envisage ideas and create new business models for our clients by developing services and products based on new technologies – from the initial vision through development to deployment, production and operation.