Research Article: Oxford brain health clinic: protocol and research database

Abstract:
Introduction Despite major advances in the field of neuroscience over the last three decades, the quality of assessments available to patients with memory problems in later life has barely changed. At the same time, a large proportion of dementia biomarker research is conducted in selected research samples that often poorly reflect the demographics of the population of patients who present to memory clinics. The Oxford Brain Health Clinic (BHC) is a newly developed clinical assessment service with embedded research in which all patients are offered high-quality clinical and research assessments, including MRI, as standard. Methods and analysis Here we describe the BHC protocol, including aligning our MRI scans with those collected in the UK Biobank. We evaluate rates of research consent for the first 108 patients (data collection ongoing) and the ability of typical psychiatry-led NHS memory-clinic patients to tolerate both clinical and research assessments. Ethics and dissemination Our ethics and consenting process enables patients to choose the level of research participation that suits them. This generates high rates of consent, enabling us to populate a research database with high-quality data that will be disseminated through a national platform (the Dementias Platform UK data portal).

Introduction:
In the UK, adults over the age of 65 years who visit their general practitioner (GP) with concerns about memory are typically referred to psychiatry-led memory clinic services. In 2009, the Memory Services National Accreditation Programme was set up by the Royal College of Psychiatrists to create a quality improvement and accreditation network for services that assess, diagnose and treat dementia in the UK. Despite this, the assessments available to memory clinical services to inform diagnosis in have remained…

Read more