The Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) study is designed to develop and validate an index to identify undiagnosed patients and those at risk for developing AD and other dementias using EMR data collected at Sarasota Memorial Hospital since 1999. Secondary objectives are to gain a deeper understanding of the clinical correlates and disease progression of AD and to identify medicines not prescribed for AD that may provide some protective or disease modifying impact. We anticipate that application of our data science approach in hospitalized patients will reveal unknown clinical and pathophysiological correlates that provide insight into factors potentially involved in susceptibility or resilience to AD and other dementias. Gaining a better understanding of disease correlates may suggest strategies for primary and secondary prevention.
Specific aims are:
- Case finding, characterization and model building
- Identify patients with a current diagnosis of AD
- Characterize static and longitudinal patterns of pathophysiology and co-morbidities
- Isolate modifiable risks that are candidates for secondary prevention therapies
- Quantitative (e.g., demographics, vital signs, laboratory test results) and qualitative
(e.g., clinical notes, physician orders) features will be employed to build a case-
definition model
- Identify cognitive / functional resilience patterns in similar patients without
diagnosis of AD - Identify potential medicines for “repositioning” to blunt AD onset and/or
progression
