Judges announced for £4 million Longitude Prize for AI-assisted dementia technology
23 Jan 2023
Leading figures from academia, charities and medical institutions are among the judges chosen for the £4 million Longitude Prize on Dementia.
The deadline to enter the award for A.I. assistive technologies, designed to boost dementia sufferers’ quality of life and independence by learning from individuals’ data, expires on Thursday 26 January.
The job of filtering down the expected flood of entries falls to the nine strong judging panel which must reduce entrants down by summer to 23 teams, each eligible for one of the scheme’s £80,000 first stage Discovery Awards, plus expert support to help develop their proposed solutions.
And next year, just five will receive an additional £0.3 million to develop a prototype or product. A further two year process will determine which single team goes on to win the £1 million first prize in 2026.
Innovation prize organiser Challenge Works, which is partnering the Alzheimer’s Society and Innovate UK to organise the event, also released the names of the judging panel.
They include: John T O’Brien, Dementia Researcher at Cambridge University Department of Psychiatry; Dawn Brooker, Emeritus Professor and former Director of the University of Worcester Association for Dementia Studies; Mary Furlong, President and CEO of Mary Furlong Associates; Consultant Nurse Dawne Garrett, former Lead for Older People & Dementia Care at the Royal College of Nursing; Eric Kihilstrom, Chair of Open Age and Aging2.0 Ambassador; Mugendi M’Rithiaa, Industrial Designer, Educator and Researcher at Machakos University, Kenya; Director at National Innovation Centre Ageing Nic Palmarini, Simon Reeve, Director of Innovation at The Alan Turing Institute, UK; and Professor Cathy Treadaway; and Professor of Creative Practice at Cardiff School of Art and Design.
Judge Dawne Garrett commented: “The outcome of this prize has potential to make a tangible and lasting change to how people living with early-stage dementia approach this disease. There is no doubt that the kind of technology we hope to see will uproot lazy assumptions about what people living with dementia can and can’t do, and ensure that people can live in a dignified and fulfilling way.”
Challenge Works Global Health Programme Manager at Challenge Works Ruth Neale added that the prize was “a prime opportunity to put forward ideas that can make a real difference in helping those who live with early-stage dementia.”
For more information on the Longitude Prize on Dementia click here.
