According to research, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) could identify dementia earlier than GPs are currently able to. This is based on the idea that early signs can be identified and analysed based on existing patient records.
A team composed of experts at Plymouth and Edinburgh universities discovered that AI had an 84% success rate at identifying early warning signs of the disease; this is something GPs are likely to be able to do as well, but the belief is that they may not be able to do so as quickly. The team working on this project hopes that patients could be diagnosed as early as 10 years before they generally are now.
The study was put together using data from 18 consenting GP practices in Devon, the information coming from 26,483 patient cases.
Currently, dementia affects around 850,000 people in the UK and, in many cases, has already been part of a patient’s life for between 10 and 15 years before diagnosis.
Escudero explained that the team created a profile of conditions and behaviours associated with dementia, which also include “high fragility” incidents, such as falls and memory issues.
For the study, the AI scanned each patients’ notes and was “triggered” by one or two potential indicators. The cases including these triggers were then checked for accuracy by a real GP.
Escudero continued: “The diagnosis right now depends on the person showing symptoms of the disease by that time the brain is already damaged.
“By diagnosing dementia early it allows the people to, if they like, prepare and access special care they may need to help improve the quality of their life.
“The technology is something that could be run in a GP practice and used to ring alarms, saying that this person could be at risk of dementia.
“We don’t want to replace GPs with machines we wanted to help them by creating something that could alert them to the disease.