Close to 600,000 Canadians currently live with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, but effective therapies are limited and focus on symptom management rather than a cure. Emerging research promises new disease-modifying drug therapies which target removal of amyloid in the brain and slow disease progression. While initial results from clinical trials are encouraging, scientists are still examining the risks and benefits of these drugs. None are currently approved for use in Canada.

Once disease-modifying drug therapies are proven to offer benefit to persons with dementia, and are safe, Canadian health systems will need to determine how to make them available in an equitable way. This is challenging because the therapies are expensive to deliver and current health system resources are not sufficient to support demand. Our study asks, “how large is this gap in resources” and “what information is needed to support future planning for dementia care”.

Set in Ontario, we will collect information on preferences for emerging therapies and necessary care pathways from persons with lived experience, health care providers, policymakers, and system stakeholders. Combining this information with data on actual health system encounters, we will develop future scenarios for expanding access to new therapies in Ontario – exploring benefits and costs. Our use of actual data from multiple sectors, in real time, and our equity focus build on previous studies.

The anticipated results from our project will improve the lives of those affected by Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias and/or those at risk because we will generate evidence to guide decisions about when and how to accommodate new disease-modifying drug therapies for dementia in the Ontario health system. These findings will be useful to other provinces. Our focus on equity and geographic variation will highlight where gaps in care might need more attention.

Our research will generate essential evidence to help Canadian health systems plan for disease-modifying drug therapies in persons with Alzheimer’s and related dementias – once these therapies have been proven effective and safe. This planning will require new, national policies to support equitable access to therapies and increases in health system budgets to support infusion, expansion of diagnostic imaging and a larger dementia health care workforce. Our project will generate data to guide these decisions.