Technological advances enabling an enhanced understanding of early Alzheimer's disease

The aspirations of Alzheimer's disease (AD) precision medicine and precision brain health are not fully realized despite significant advances in early pathological detection. Hampering progress is the difficult challenge of the accurate detection of behavioral symptoms that can help differentiate those at high risk specific to AD versus those with more AD and related dementias (ADRD), who may have AD along with other types of dementia, as well as those who will and will not progress to clinically expressed disease. Technological advances in hardware, software, and analytics are paving the way to opportunities to overcome these long-standing barriers to early clinical symptom detection, when recent and emerging interventions might be most effective. It is important to note that these innovations must not exist in isolation. Integration of data from both AD/ADRD related studies and non-AD related studies is needed whenever brain-related measures are collected to fully realize the scientific opportunities. We envision a near future of harmonized participant data sharing, encompassing standardized multimodal data alongside emerging digital streams, to deliver an invaluable resource for the global research community. HIGHLIGHTS: Technology is overcoming barriers to accurate early detection of behavioral symptoms of AD/ADRD. The National Alzheimer's Coordinating Center is paving the way for the integration of technological advances into AD/ADRD research. A technologically-enabled framework provides a solution for open science on a global scale.