Luca Healthcare joins global alliance initiated by DiMe to build digital measures for Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

17 August, 2023

By working together with a balanced and inclusive group of global multistakeholder experts, including pharmaceutical companies, patients, care partners, clinicians, clinical scientists, technological, regulatory, and payer experts, there is an opportunity to define meaningful global aspects of health and build consensus for a set of core digital clinical measures in ADRD at the intersection of technological capabilities.

Shanghai, August 16, 2023 – Luca Healthcare (“Luca”), a leader in developing clinically validated digital health solutions, today announced it has entered into a partnership initiated by the Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) to work together in this study along with Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation, Biogen, Boston University, Eisai, Eli Lilly and Company, and Merck. Luca will drive the effort to guide and coordinate participant clinicians, care partners and patients from China.

Globally, Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) affects 47 million people and the expected growth is staggering, with cases expected to double every 20 years. The collaboration aims to tackle one of the greatest challenges in advancing therapies for ADRD: a lack of measures that can actually determine whether new potential treatments are working. By defining an optimized set of core digital clinical measures that address patient, care partner, and clinical unmet needs, this project is to transform ADRD research and care.

Increasingly, digital tools such as wearable sensors are being used to provide complete and precise information about the impact of disease on patients’ lives. These technologies and the data they generate help quantify the disease in a patient-centered way, resulting in digital indicators that can be used to speed the successful development of effective new treatments and better manage disease during routine care.

“Digital measures offer enormous promise to bolster collective understanding of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias,” said Dr. Jian Yang, Associate Vice President of Digital Health at Eli Lilly and Company. “These measures can deepen our knowledge of disease progression, define new disease phenotypes, and support earlier diagnosis – all critically important insights for a condition where inaccurate and delayed diagnosis is common and current standard of care does not target the underlying plaque pathology.”

“China has over 265 million people aged 60 years and above, of which 40 million people have mild cognitive impairment with 15 million people having a form of dementia. With ADRD, early diagnosis is key. We are pleased to join this global initiative and contribute to help better understand and treat this disease. Our mission has always been to provide the most advanced digital health solutions to improve patients’ clinical benefits and quality of life.” said Dr. Echo Chen, Luca Healthcare’s CEO.

“Rapid advances in digital technologies present unparalleled opportunities to transform the way neurodegenerative diseases can be predicted, diagnosed, prevented and treated.” said Jennifer Goldsack, CEO of DiMe. By saying “we are delighted to be partnering with leading organizations like Luca Healthcare. Their expertise and experience in digital biomarkers and digital health solution development will have a significant impact on our collective work to establish core digital clinical measures for ADRD. We believe that by convening a group of leading organizations from around the world, we will be able to develop a core digital measure set to bring consensus, consistency, and effectiveness to how we measure the symptoms of ADRD and improve drug development and clinical care”, Jennifer expressed great expectation for the collaboration with Luca.

About Luca Healthcare

Luca Healthcare is a leader in using AI algorithms and machine learning to develop predictive healthcare solutions. We build innovative software solutions that analyze behavioral and physiological characteristics associated with diseases across a wide range of therapeutic areas. The company’s digital solutions improve patient outcomes through disease diagnosis and identifying shifts in disease progression or exacerbations that require proactive interventions. Backed by scientific evidence and clinical validation, our platform delivers significant value to patients, providers and life sciences companies.

About the Digital Medicine Society

The Digital Medicine Society (DiMe) is a professional society serving the digital medicine community, driving scientific progress and broad acceptance of digital medicine to enhance public health. DiMe is committed to fully integrating experts from all of the disciplines comprising digital medicine, from regulators to white-hat hackers, ethicists to engineers, and clinicians to citizen scientists.