Proposing a person-centred decentralised health data ecosystem to optimise applied data science and artificial intelligence for healthy cognitive ageing

The advent of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, characterised as ‘a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres’ by the World Economic Forum, has been accompanied by a plethora of innovative and disruptive emerging technologies. Global healthcare systems need to better utilise the latest technologies and evolve to meet the social, clinical, economic and policy challenges of ageing population demographics, while also ensuring they are deployed in an ethical and equitable manner. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology are perfect examples of innovations that have the potential for paradigm-shifting impact this century. AI has the capacity to detect patterns and derive actionable impactful insights from diverse, heterogenous, longitudinal data, and blockchain is a smart technology that facilitates the transfer of knowledge and value in a transparent, immutable, and accountable manner. Moreover, a primary barrier to realise AI’s full potential has been agreeing and facilitating an ethical, equitable and trustworthy data sharing framework. Given the global human and economic burden of the dementia’s, we propose that healthy cognitive ageing represents an opportunity for the highest immediate impact, and would benefit greatly from the application of precision ‘P4’ medicine (predictive, preventative, personalised, and participatory). This could be accomplished through a person-centred decentralised health data ecosystem to realise the potential of applied data science to reduce burden on healthcare systems, accelerate dementia clinical research innovation, and extend cognitive healthspan.