A mini review of transforming dementia care in China with data-driven insights: overcoming diagnostic and time-delayed barriers.

Abstract

Introduction: Inadequate primary care infrastructure and training in China and misconceptions about aging lead to high mis-/under-diagnoses and serious time delays for dementia patients, imposing significant burdens on family members and medical carers.

Main body: A flowchart integrating rural and urban areas of China dementia care pathway is proposed, especially spotting the obstacles of mis/under-diagnoses and time delays that can be alleviated by data-driven computational strategies. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning models built on dementia data are succinctly reviewed in terms of the roadmap of dementia care from home, community to hospital settings. Challenges and corresponding recommendations to clinical transformation are then reported from the viewpoint of diverse dementia data integrity and accessibility, as well as models' interpretability, reliability, and transparency.

Discussion: Dementia cohort study along with developing a center-crossed dementia data platform in China should be strongly encouraged, also data should be publicly accessible where appropriate. Only be doing so can the challenges be overcome and can AI-enabled dementia research be enhanced, leading to an optimized pathway of dementia care in China. Future policy-guided cooperation between researchers and multi-stakeholders are urgently called for dementia 4E (early-screening, early-assessment, early-diagnosis, and early-intervention).