{"id":244062,"date":"2026-01-14T11:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/244062\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T11:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T11:17:10","slug":"access-ad-a-new-european-initiative-to-accelerate-timely-and-equitable-ad-diagnosis-treatment-and-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/244062\/","title":{"rendered":"ACCESS-AD: a new European initiative to accelerate timely and equitable AD diagnosis, treatment and care"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"ACCESS-AD\"\/<\/p>\n

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The ACCESS-AD Project<\/p>\n

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Credit: ACCESS-AD<\/p>\n

Amsterdam, 13 January 2026. Today, the ACCESS-AD consortium is announcing the launch of a transformative European initiative that will accelerate the implementation of scientific innovations for Alzheimer\u2019s disease (AD) management in real-world health systems. The international consortium – bringing together academic institutions, industry partners, SMEs and patient organisations – is co-led by Amsterdam UMC, Siemens Healthineers, King\u2019s College London and Gates Ventures, with funding from the European Commission\u2019s Innovative Health Initiative<\/a> for a five-year period.<\/p>\n

The project begins at a pivotal moment for AD care in Europe. In 2025, two new disease-modifying therapies (DMTs), lecanemab and donanemab, received regulatory approval, offering a first opportunity to slow the progression of AD. However, additional accessible and scalable treatment options are also needed, since Member States are confronted with rapidly escalating diagnostic bottlenecks, long waiting times and a growing shortage of specialised healthcare professionals. AD prevalence is rising sharply and is expected to exceed 19 million by 2050 in Europe alone. Health systems are already struggling to deliver timely diagnostic testing, brain imaging and structured clinical follow-up, raising the risk of delayed treatment and poorer outcomes.<\/p>\n

ACCESS-AD aims to address these challenges directly, accelerating innovation and strengthening equitable access to timely and effective care. \u201cOur vision is simple but ambitious: to make personalised care a reality for every patient with AD, regardless of where they live,\u201d said Professor Frederik Barkhof from Amsterdam UMC and Clinical Lead of ACCESS-AD. \u201cACCESS-AD brings together the clinical, scientific and societal stakeholders needed to turn innovation into everyday practice across Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

A Europe-wide, integrated framework for diagnosis, treatment and monitoring<\/p>\n

ACCESS-AD is pioneering a coordinated, multimodal clinical framework that unites brain imaging, blood-based biomarkers, digital monitoring tools, AI-driven decision support, and real-world evidence into a seamless patient pathway. Its design aims to accelerate diagnostic confirmation, support the safe administration of DMTs and novel interventions, and broaden access to advanced innovations beyond specialist centres, including primary care and underserved regions.<\/p>\n

A central focus of the project is the combination of advanced but accessible neuroimaging with expanded use of fluid and digital biomarkers. This will support early and accurate patient identification, enabling timely diagnosis and entry into personalised treatment pathways that may include DMTs, targeted lifestyle interventions and nutritional strategies. ACCESS-AD also aims to widen access to tools that historically have been available only in centres of excellence, such as accelerated MRI protocols, quantitative amyloid PET and automated safety monitoring.<\/p>\n

ACCESS-AD introduces a coordinated innovation pathway structured across four key clinical stages:<\/p>\n

\tDETECT: integration of blood-based biomarkers and digital tools with accelerated MRI and quantitative PET for scalable diagnostic confirmation
\n\tSTRATIFY: patient-centred workflows informed by AI-based progression and treatment-response models, advancing precision medicine in AD
\n\tTREAT: real-world data collection on the usability, safety and implementation of DMTs and lifestyle interventions across multiple European settings
\n\tMONITOR: AI and digital tools for continuous monitoring of disease progression, supported by brain imaging protocols optimised for DMT safety monitoring<\/p>\n

\u201cACCESS-AD brings together expertise from across Europe to address the urgent need for more effective and personalised Alzheimer\u2019s care,\u201d said Andreas Schneck, head of Magnetic Resonance at Siemens Healthineers, Industry Lead of ACCESS-AD. \u201cBy integrating laboratory diagnostics, advanced imaging, and AI-driven digital tools, this coordinated approach aims to strengthen the entire care pathway \u2013 enabling timely diagnosis, precision treatment, and equitable access to innovations across diverse care settings.\u201d <\/p>\n

AI-driven prediction to guide safety and treatment decisions<\/p>\n

The ACCESS-AD framework is being built around AI-driven prediction models capable of forecasting treatment response, identifying patients at risk of adverse events, and guiding personalised treatment planning. These models will draw upon harmonised MRI and PET data, blood biomarkers and digital measures from wearables and smartphones. A dementia dashboard will synthesise the multimodal data into clear, actionable insights for clinicians in both specialist and community-based settings.<\/p>\n

\u201cSharing and integrating diverse data sources is essential to build robust AI models that can identify the right patients, for the right treatment, at the right time,\u201d said Niranjan Bose, Industry Co-Lead from Gates Ventures. \u201cACCESS-AD will demonstrate how responsible data ecosystems can accelerate both scientific discovery and clinical impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Real-world evidence to strengthen European system preparedness<\/p>\n

A cornerstone of ACCESS-AD is its pan-European AD registry, which will leverage the established InRAD<\/a> platform. This infrastructure will collect real-world data from more than 500 patients across a variety of health systems, capturing safety, clinical evolution and treatment outcomes under routine clinical conditions. The registry will also support a pilot study that tests the feasibility of combining DMTs with a multicomponent lifestyle intervention and advanced nutritional supplements from Nestl\u00e9, as well as a clinical prediction study of the once-daily oral therapy, blarcamesine.<\/p>\n

Recognising the need for equitable and scalable implementation, ACCESS-AD integrates health-economic modelling, regulatory development, ethical reflection and sustainability assessments. European Patient Advisory Boards will ensure that the needs and values of patients and carers are embedded throughout the project. ACCESS-AD builds on other IHI initiatives including PROMINENT<\/a>, PREDICTOM<\/a>, AD-RIDDLE<\/a> and EPND<\/a>, ensuring that advances in early detection, biomarker innovation and data infrastructure translate into improved diagnosis, treatment and care.<\/p>\n

\u201cACCESS-AD is a holistic effort across private and public sectors,\u201d noted Professor Dag Aarsland from KCL, clinical co-Lead of the project. \u201cBy combining technological innovation with economic, ethical, regulatory and patient perspectives, we aim to chart a sustainable, scalable and equitable pathway for the implementation of new AD diagnostics and treatments, including multidomain lifestyle interventions and new disease-modifying therapies.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

About ACCESS-AD<\/p>\n

ACCESS-AD receives funding under the auspices of the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU). The ACCESS-AD programme has an initial budget of over \u20ac37 million, comprising ca. \u20ac20 million from the EU and ca. \u20ac17 million from the industry partners. The budget is distributed across the following 30 partners:<\/p>\n

To learn more about ACCESS-AD, visit the project website: www.access-ad.org<\/a><\/p>\n

For additional information, please contact info@access-ad.org<\/a><\/p>\n

About the Innovative Health Initiative<\/p>\n

The Innovative Health Initiative (IHI) aims to translate health research and innovation into real benefits for patients and society, and ensure that Europe remains at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary, sustainable, patient-centric health research. Health research and care increasingly involve diverse sectors. By supporting projects that bring these sectors together, IHI will pave the way for a more integrated approach to health care, covering prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and disease management. IHI is a partnership between the European Union and European industry associations representing the pharmaceutical, medical technology, biotechnology, digital health, and vaccine industries, namely COCIR, EFPIA (including Vaccines Europe), EuropaBio, and MedTech Europe. IHI\u2019s total budget for the period 2021-2027 is \u20ac2.4 billion. Half of this comes from Horizon Europe, the EU\u2019s research and innovation programme. The IHI industry partners have committed \u20ac1 billion to IHI, and a further \u20ac200 million can be committed by other organisations that decide to become Contributing Partners.<\/p>\n

Acknowledgement<\/p>\n

This project is supported by the Innovative Health Initiative Joint Undertaking (IHI JU) under grant agreement No 101253010. The JU receives support from the European Union\u2019s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme and COCIR, EFPIA, Europa B\u00edo, MedTech Europe, and Vaccines Europe, and Anavex, Muhdo and Neurimmune. <\/p>\n

Disclaimer<\/p>\n

ACCESS-AD is funded by the European Union, the private members, and those contributing partners of the IHI JU. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the aforementioned parties. None of the aforementioned parties can be held responsible for them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"image:\u00a0 The ACCESS-AD Project view more\u00a0 Credit: ACCESS-AD Amsterdam, 13 January 2026. Today, the ACCESS-AD consortium is announcing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-244062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}