11-12 November 2014
Congrès Beaulieu Lausanne - Avenue des Bergières 10 - Lausanne, Switzerland

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Press release (12 November 2014):
A Shared Global Agenda to Fight Alzheimer’s Disease: Addressing the Barriers to Innovation 

This workshop provided an international forum for stakeholders to articulate achievements and opportunities in biomedical research and health innovation for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia. It discussed the challenges and barriers to the development of disease-modifying treatments and diagnostics for Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia. This included the need to invigorate biomarker R&D, adopt more innovative clinical trials, and encourage an adaptive regulatory process. Stakeholders engaged in discussions to consider options towards more innovative research and governance models.

Through an exchange on good practices, representatives from governments, regulatory agencies, academia, industry, and patient organisations heard about progress in:
 

• Implementing innovative biomedical research tools in product development and regulatory models, including the scope for adaptive regulatory processes, enhanced clinical trial designs and a strengthened diagnostic environment.
   
• Addressing the individual needs, challenges and options of all stakeholders in biomedical research and health innovation through open, collaborative research approaches.
   
• Enabling a global paradigm shift from treating symptoms to changing the underlying progression of the disease – identifying challenges and gaps in the development of disease-modifying treatments in Alzheimer’s disease and other dementia.

This was a follow-up event to the OECD workshop on “Better Health through Biomedicine: Innovative Governance” in Berlin, Germany in 2010. It is intended to provide input to ongoing international policy discussions on Alzheimer’s and dementia, including the work of the World Dementia Council.

Participation was by invitation. For further information, please contact: Hermann.Garden@oecd.org 

Programme Final agenda (pdf) Workshop summary report

Further reading OECD work on dementia  G8 dementia summit agreements UK Department of Health: The Dementia Challenge - Fighting back against dementia