The Foundation has established a partnership with Alzheimer’s Society on The Longitude Prize on Dementia. The Prize seeks to incentivise assistive technologies to help people remain independent in their homes – an effective way to manage progression in those diagnosed.
By galvanizing the brightest innovators across the world, the Longitude Prize on Dementia leads to the creation of transformative assistive technologies to best support people affected by dementia.
The Foundation is directly supporting the innovators to create life-changing assistive technologies by supporting core costs. The Foundation’s involvement also brings with it a non-financial partnership with leading social care provider, CareTech PLC, which enables innovators to move through the process by offering their expertise and invaluable access to social care resources.
Innovators are challenged to develop technologies that learn about the lives of people with early-stage dementia, employing novel and emerging technologies to bridge cognitive gaps that develop as their condition progresses.
United with Nesta Challenges, the Longitude Prize is a 43-month race to ground-breaking innovation. By joining the team as a partner, with both financial and non-financial support, the Prize, has the potential to radically transform the future of personalised care.
Nesta’s work on challenge prizes began in 2008 with the 1M Big Green Challenge and has continued through to today, with the use of prizes to effectively address social challenges. Nesta are independent supporters of change to help communities thrive and inspire the best-placed, most diverse groups of people around the world to act. They support the boldest and bravest ideas to become real, and seed long-term change to advance society and build a better future for everyone.
The focus of this prize is to develop a piece of assistive technology for people living with dementia. Such a solution could have a significant wider impact for people with complex needs for the many people living with learning disabilities.
How the Longitude Prize could help people with a learning disability and dementia:
- A significant number of people with dementia also have a learning disability. The number of those living with both will only increase, as people with learning disabilities, particularly those with Down’s Syndrome, are at risk of developing dementia.
- This partnership would ensure that people living with dementia and disabilities, perspectives, views and needs are included in the design and scoping of the Longitude Prize.
- The fundamental purpose of ensuring a product is designed that learns from the person using the device.
- The £4.1m Longitude Prize on Dementia will award £3.1 million in seed funding and grants to the most promising innovators, with a £1 million prize awarded to the winner in early 2026.
In addition, wider support has been funded to provide innovators with crucial insight and expertise, facilitating whatever they need to bring their ideas to life – like access to data, collaborations with people living with dementia and dementia organisations in the UK and around the world, advice on product design, user experience and business mentoring.
The entry window for the Longitude Prize on Dementia will open when the prize launches in September 2022 and full details about the prize criteria will be published.
Be the first to find out more about the Longitude Prize on Dementia when it launches this September. Sign up to the newsletter today.
