World Alzheimer’s Day: How innovation can support early diagnosis
How passive monitoring technologies and breakthrough diagnostic tools are offering hope for the future of dementia and Alzheimer’s management.
September 21, 2026
Monday, September 21 - Today marks World Alzheimer’s Day, a global opportunity to raise awareness and challenge the stigma that surrounds Alzheimer's and other dementias - and to imagine a world changed by the future of diagnosis and treatment.
According to Alzheimer’s Disease International, worldwide cases of dementia are expected to rise from 55 million to more than 139 million by 2050, with the largest increases happening in low- and middle-income countries.
Such a rapid increase is placing unprecedented strain on health and care systems around the world. But while the prevalence of Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia is growing dramatically, it can still take years for families to get a diagnosis. One study published in 2025 found it took an average of 3.5 years across all types of dementia.
Critically, many people currently living with dementia haven’t received any kind of diagnosis at all.
New research and innovative solutions can offer promise, reducing time to diagnosis and improving dementia care. Here at Kneu, we believe collaboration between health and care organizations, charities, research institutes and industry is key to unlocking the potential of these advances to improve care for patients and reduce the burden on pressured services.
Looking to the future: the power of early diagnosis
Despite the sharp rise in dementia cases, there is cause to be hopeful. The global aging population reflects the widespread success of improved healthcare over the last 100+ years, with people living for longer and into older age - itself the single biggest risk factor for dementia.
Early diagnosis and preventative action can make a meaningful difference, helping patients get access to treatments and therapies which can help to slow cognitive decline, significantly improve quality of life and reduce hospital admissions.
No case of dementia can be defined by a single data point or a single symptom. At Kneu, we’re building systems and monitoring tools that use signals from multimodal data to improve assessment efficiency and support diagnosis, track symptoms and detect cognitive decline for people who are living with dementia.
Our technology is designed to be simple and low burden, embedded into day-to-day devices such as smartphones and watches, so patients can collect the continuous, longitudinal data that allows healthcare practitioners to make dynamic, personalized decisions.
Diagnostic breakthroughs
These types of monitoring and data-collection tools, alongside new diagnostic breakthroughs such as the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent clearance of a first-of-its-kind blood test for Alzheimer’s, offer real hope for a future.
Coupled with innovations like Kneu’s monitoring technologies, new diagnostic tools such as these offer hope for improved dementia pathways, where diagnosis and management are handled more effectively in the face of globally increasing disease burden.