Disease management for Alzheimer's: How digital can change lives

Alzheimer's is the fifth most common cause of death for American adults aged 65 and over, and about 6 million Americans live with this disease. That number continues to rise. This means Alzheimer's impacts the lives of not only millions of patients, but also their loved ones. Alzheimer’s disease also takes a heavy toll on the healthcare system, with treatment costing $321 billion in 2022 alone.

Digital solutions can offer tools to help patients and caregivers cope with Alzheimer's. Biopharma companies have the opportunity to ease caregiver struggles and improve patient quality of life through digital solutions.

You can see how digital solutions can improve care and caregiver quality of life by watching our Disease Management Solution demo for Alzheimer's disease.

“Digital enables more engaging patient experiences by increasing therapy compliance, improving disease and medical tracking and, as importantly, building connections among patients and with healthcare providers," says Brad Gescheider, Chief Commercial Officer at Woebot Health and former Global Head of Digital Innovation, Patient Services and Immunology at Sanofi. "The data collected with digital can be used to deliver more personalized therapies."

To dive deeper, check out our white paper, Revolutionizing disease management for Alzheimer's through digital: Exploring challenges and opportunities.

Challenges in treating Alzheimer's

Patients with Alzheimer's have an especially hard time with adherence and persistence over time, due to the symptoms of the disease. As symptoms worsen, the burden of care increasingly falls on caregivers. Providers have their own challenges that can impact the amount of time it takes a patient to get an Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Patients struggle with:

• A diminished ability to keep track of medications and treatments as the disease progresses

• The emotional toll of going through a steep decline

• The lifestyle changes that become necessary as the disease progresses

Meanwhile, caregivers face challenges including:

• The cost of providing support to a dementia patient

• The emotional impact of supporting someone who is both ill and agitated

• The need to balance day-to-day care with end-of-life planning

Providers have difficulty:

• Providing treatments for other conditions that their Alzheimer's patients are living with

• Getting their patients' Alzheimer's treatments covered by insurance

• Diagnosing patients—symptoms are often dismissed as a normal part of the aging process, and 39% of Primary Care Providers (PCPs) are uncomfortable making an Alzheimer's diagnosis

Opportunities for digital in the Alzheimer's space

Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers need support as they navigate this disease and the various treatments—including disease modifying therapies (DMTs). An integrated disease management solution can address the challenges mentioned above by:

• Increasing patient and caregiver engagement with apps and portals that provide education, quality-of-life questionnaires, checklists, reminders and more

• Improving communication between patients and providers, which can increase collaboration and streamline care decisions

• Generating invaluable real-world data (RWD) at the individual patient and population levels; this optimizes both R&D and commercialization

"I do think that there is a tremendous opportunity for digital in neurology. SaMD can help measure cognition levels. It is such a cool ability to be able to run through a series of tests very quickly, within ten minutes, and get to a point where you can measure cognition level, so that you might identify someone suffering from a dementia state."

– Executive insight from market research

Leveraging our digital Disease Management Solution

BrightInsight's digital Disease Management Solution can help you change the lives of Alzheimer's patients and their caregivers. Our platform supports:

• Connected devices

• Custom clinical surveys to capture electronic Patient Reported Outcomes (ePRO) and Quality of Life (QoL) tracking

• Configurable notifications, reminders and alerts to prompt health interventions

• Configurable care plans and educational resources to personalize the patient experience

• Configurable user and administration controls and alerts to meet data privacy requirements

• Robust clinician interfaces that integrate with the EHR

Learn about the challenges and opportunities in disease management of Alzheimer's by reading our white paper, Revolutionizing disease management for Alzheimer's through digital: Exploring challenges and opportunities.