Dementia: modern management and new developments

Prof Craig Ritchie is Founder and CEO of Scottish Brain Sciences and Professor of Brain Health and Neurodegenerative Medicine at the University of St Andrew’s, having moved from his role as Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Mental Health at Imperial College London in October 2014. He completed his PhD at UCL through an MRC Health Services Research Fellowship and was appointed as Senior Lecturer in Old Age Psychiatry at Imperial College London in 2007. He has also served as R&D Director at West London Mental Health Trust from 2010-14 and Deputy Director of the London Northwest NIHR Clinical Research Network. In 2014 he was appointed as Chair in Psychiatry of Ageing at the University of Edinburgh. In 2015 he established the Centre for Dementia Prevention and that year took on the academic leadership role of the EPAD (European Prevention of Alzheimer’s Dementia) Programme. Between 2017 and 2022 he was the elected Chair of the Scottish Dementia Research Consortium and in 2020 he founded and was the inaugural Director of Brain Health Scotland. He has published over 400 academic papers, conference abstracts and book chapters and secured approximately €100M of grant funding in his career to date. His main research interest is the interface between clinical trials and translational epidemiology (cohort studies) with a drive to develop the infrastructures at a national level (in Scotland) to prepare health systems and prosecute rapid ‘research into practice’ programmes. He is a pioneer and leading advocate for the Brain Health Movement that works across the life course from primary to secondary prevention of late-stage neurodegenerative disease. This involved working at a public health and policy level as well as developing and implementing Brain Health Clinics across Scotland following ‘The Scottish Model for Brain Health Services’. This work has led Scotland to being one of the Flagship Countries in the Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative for Health Care Readiness. He established Scottish Brain Sciences in summer 2022 to accelerate the development of both diagnostics and therapeutics for early-stage neurodegenerative disease and moved full time into the role of CEO of this company in January 2023.

Dr Ruth Akiyo Mizoguchi is a Care of the Elderly Consultant and Dementia Lead at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust (London, UK) after working at the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust from 2012- 2018.  She is an Honorary Senior Clinical lecturer at Imperial College where she provides dementia teaching to medical students and doctors.  She originally obtained a medical degree at Tokai University School of Medicine, Japan and then completed further medical training at Imperial College, London. She received her specialist training in general internal medicine and geriatric medicine in London. During her specialist training she worked in Hong Kong for a year where she developed interest in dementia. She also gained research experience in Neuroimaging & Dementia at Imperial College. She visited UCSF Memory Aging Center, USA . She set up the Multidisciplinary team Memory Clinic with Neurologists at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.