Ben Bolton, Managing Director at Gracechurch talks about his time at the annual Alzheimer’s Society Research Lecture.
Last week I was invited to attend the annual Alzheimers Society research lecture. The event was held in the beautiful Royal Society of Chemistry in Central London.
Insurindex, Gracechurch and Brandex are setting up a partnership with the Alzheimers Society, which we hope will enable significant additional contributions and increased insurance sector profile for the already successful Insurance United Against Dementia (IUAD) campaign.
I also have my own personal connection to the cause as my own mother passed away from Alzheimers in 2022.
The evening started off with networking (lovely canapes) and meeting the ‘innovators’ who were exhibiting products and services relating to supporting Alzheimers patients, everything from virtual reality headsets to memory books and comforting toys (modelled here by Brandex’s very own Emma Osborne).
Emma Osborne at the event.
The excellent talks included Dr Richard Oakley, Associate Director of Research and Innovation at Alzheimer’s Society inspiring us with some Churchillian phrases ‘this is the end of the beginning…’ – relevant because the challenges in progressing to a cure are not insubstantial. Professor James Cole, Professor of Neuroimage Computing at UCL exemplified this in his talk about research using brain scans, showing how much variance there is in brain condition even where dementia is diagnosed – meaning that the likelihood of a ‘one-size-fits-all’ treatment is low.
I was struck by how reliant progress is on the availability of sufficient high quality data – the more data the researchers can obtain and analyse, the closer we will be to understanding the disease. Obtaining the data is of course heavily dependent on funding and (potentially) trusted partnerships with the pharma companies.
This was an excellent event and a great way to get closer to the issues as we work more closely with the Alzheimers Society.