’Zero-burden’ home assessment of cognition and behaviour: new approaches and implications for clinical trials
We need to develop new ways to help people live well with dementia. We have an ageing population, limited resources for home care and no immediate cures available. All too often patients are isolated and develop preventable problems leading to unnecessary hospital admissions. New technologies hold great promise for providing solutions.

I will described work from the UK Dementia Research Institute Care Research & Technology Centre (CR&T) to develop new ways of caring for people with dementia through advanced technologies. CR&T are working to find new ways to keep people independent in their homes, improve general health and sleep, and reduce confusion and agitation. Our work is centred develop low or zero-burden approaches to measuring behaviour in the home, rather than using clinical measures in the hospital, and providing automated AI driven analysis of the collected data.

I will present data from studies of infection and sleep in dementia to illustrate our approach and highlight the potential benefits of technology deployed into the homes of people living with dementia. I will also discuss how digital measures could contribute to the assessment of neurodegenerative risk and the implications of home based monitoring for clinical trial outcome measures.
Date: 2 July 2025, 15:00
Venue: John Radcliffe West Wing and Children's Hospital, Headington OX3 9DU
Venue Details: Seminar room A&B, West Wing, Level 6
Speaker: Prof. David Sharp (Imperial College London)
Organising department: MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit
Organiser: Prof. Andrew Sharott (MRC Brain Network Dynamics Unit)
Host: Prof. Peter Magill (University of Oxford)
Part of: Brain Network Dynamics Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Nima Mirkhani