The Longest Day of the year, or summer solstice, happens on June 21, 2022. For this reason, the Alzheimer’s Association chose this day to raise awareness across the world about fighting the darkness of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) through fundraising.

To shine a light on the physician burden of managing the AD journey for patients, SYNAPS Dx points to DISCERN™, the first autopsy-validated, highly accurate, minimally invasive skin test informing the diagnosis of AD versus other forms of non-AD dementias and those with AD and other degenerative pathologies.

This test is composed of three discrete assays that accurately assess the loss of synaptic activity in the brain due to AD and has been validated through biopsy. What’s more, the AD test’s assays have demonstrated >95% sensitivity and specificity.

Getting an accurate AD diagnosis is important because treatment options for AD patients are specific and distinct compared to treatments for patients with other forms of non-AD dementia.

Understanding Physician Burden

Physicians routinely perform cognitive testing and imaging to reach an AD diagnosis. They note several unmet needs in this process, namely the lack of a definitive diagnosis, the subjectivity with the current diagnostic pathway and the cost burden for unreimbursed procedures.

To effectively address these unmet needs, they require objective, less invasive diagnostic tests to inform a definitive diagnosis of AD. Many recognize that the ability to differentiate earlier between AD and another form of dementia is increasingly essential, even without specific treatments for AD.

The study found a significant level of need:

• 9 out of 11 physicians believe that the lack of certainty about the true benefit of aducanumab is an unmet need in AD diagnosis
• 8 out of 11 physicians underscore the utility of an objective, less invasive diagnostic test
• 7 out of 12 cited the need for a test that can differentiate AD from other forms of dementia

Additionally, this study showed that 8 out of 12 physicians were likely to order the DISCERN™ test to diagnose patients with suspected AD. 

Physicians Would Likely Opt for DISCERN

Many physicians believe DISCERN™ is well-positioned to reduce or replace costly and often invasive diagnostic tests, including PET scans, brain MRI, CT scans and CSF punctures. Clinical utility of DISCERN™ is unique from other common diagnostic tests as it targets factors related to cognitive loss in AD rather than assessing clinical findings associated with AD, such as amyloid plaque.

Both primary care physicians and specialists indicated that strength of evidence, including test performance characteristics, cost and coverage, are the biggest drivers in the decision to adopt DISCERN™. What’s more, they expect that the test would easily fit into the diagnostic pathway before advanced imaging tests of patients diagnosed with dementia are suspected of having AD.

DISCERN™ meets the unmet need for a diagnostic tool that supports early detection and a simple test that is widely accessible and affordable.

Besides relieving physician burden, DISCERN™ gives patients and families the answers they need and supports the establishment of authorization protocols by payers for prescribing and reimbursing treatment. It also helps pharmaceutical companies identify appropriate clinical trial participants and may provide additional metrics to evaluate treatment response.

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An estimated 5.8 million Americans age 65 and older live with Alzheimer’s disease (AD), a progressive disease that destroys memory and other important mental functions, with projections showing that by 2050 that number will reach 12.7 million.

AD tends to progress slowly in three general stages: early or mild cognitive impairment (MCI), moderate and severe. Because AD affects people in different ways, each person may experience symptoms — or progress through the stages — differently. On average, a person with AD lives four to eight years after diagnosis, but can live as long as 20 years, depending on other factors.

An early diagnosis of AD is important because it can help determine if the symptoms a patient is experiencing are genuinely due to AD or some other conditions that can be curable or managed with different interventions.  Unfortunately, accurately diagnosing AD in people with MCI is challenging as data suggest that only about 40% of people diagnosed with MCI develop AD over 10 years.

SYNAPS Dx’s DISCERN™ is the world’s first easy-to-administer test that can accurately identify AD at the earliest stages of onset by testing for the presence of three key proprietary biomarkers that are unique to AD.

Why Early Diagnosis Matters

An early AD diagnosis allows patients to start clinical interventions sooner, saving time, money, and the despair of caregivers and patients not knowing what is happening medically. Early diagnosis also gives patients the chance to have a say in their care.  Moreover, newer disease modifying treatments for AD are indicated for MCI or early-stage dementia, where the progression to AD is less clear and diagnosis is less accurate. Now that there are more treatment options becoming available, having an accurate diagnosis of AD earlier in the disease is of greater importance.

Primary healthcare professionals play an important role in recognizing individuals at risk, suggesting lifestyle changes that can prevent or slow down the disease and making a timely diagnosis and initiating treatment that can significantly delay its progression. Early intervention is the optimal strategy because it preserves the patient’s level of function for longer.

Until the launch of DISCERN™, only autopsy findings at death provided a definitive diagnosis of AD in people who lived with dementia. What’s more, AD often co-develops with other age-related neurological disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease, strokes, and different types of dementias.

Value of Accurate AD Test 

DISCERN™ is designed to accurately assess the loss of synaptic activity in the brain, where memories lie, due to AD. The loss of synaptic activity eventually leads to loss in memory, language, reasoning and social behavior, which are common in those with AD.

Our assays have demonstrated >95% sensitivity and specificity. Giving patients and families the answers they need enables providers to make a conclusive diagnosis and informed treatment decisions and allows payers to establish protocols and prior authorizations for prescribing and reimbursing treatment. It also helps pharmaceutical companies identify appropriate clinical trial participants.

Think of DISCERN™ as a tool to manage appropriate patient access to future approved therapies, in addition to the clinical and economic benefits of improved early, accurate diagnosis.

“Let the Data Talk”

Nick Vass, J29 Inc.

 As companies continue to navigate through unchartered territories in remote work environments, it’s important for some of our teams to stay true to the countless acts that led our success to where it is. While the way we do business has been changed in the moment, the question of how we came to that decision-making process will stay true – by letting data have a seat at the table.

What does this mean? For our team at J29, we like to live by the phrase, “let the data talk.” While cliché at first, it’s important for us to stay true to our model of data driven decision making. From the time I first joined J29 to now, there are some key attributes that stand out:

• Robust emphasis on collecting several fields of data
• Consistent investment in improving our tools and skills to comprehend that data
• Commitment to making data widely accessible
• Office-wide willingness to listen to data-driven ideas that come through any level of our organization

Lastly, the continuous dedication to decisions being driven by data has always been an ongoing improvement. Simply put, our team strives to make sure that data silos are addressed and resolved before critical problems arise. Data silos can be cultural, technological, or even structural-based inadequacies in any department or organization. More times than not, a silo in place causes wasted resources and limited productivity to take care of a company’s most important asset – data.

Data silos prevent teams from seeing the bigger picture, and more importantly being able to have continued data-driven decision making. For J29, a data silo can prevent us from recognizing a security threats sooner and analyzing traffic for unusual patterns. By definition, a data silo is when only one team is able to access a certain data set or source of that data – creating inefficiencies when cross-collaboration and wide-spread project involvement is necessary.

Currently, J29 is supporting a state-of-the-art data consolidation project revolving around integrations to the State of Maryland’s new Total Human-service Integrated Network (MD THINK) platform. This revolutionary platform will be the first of its kind in the United States, thus solving a data silo issue of Maryland’s Social Service Administration, Family Investment Administration, and Child Support Administration not being able to cross reference data sets in dire times of need. Prior programs were buried deep in conflicting architectures, resulting in massive spending’s on maintenance and restrictions for modifications. Coming full circle with J29’s MD THINK works, the importance of having data drive your team is validly crucial to success. In the case of Maryland, a joint human-service decision to having data on a single, integrated platform will allow user groups access to a modernized cloud-based platform – eliminating duplicate data entry and creating a streamlined eligibility enrollment process.

When the final whistle sounds on developments and integrations, over 30,000 Marylanders will have access to more than 65 application environments and 30 AWS products – eliminating previously restricting data silos and allowing data-driven decision making to lead health and human services throughout Maryland.

In conclusion, for J29 we consider data to have a consistent seat at the “table” that allows for our team to deeply analyze where our decisions could, or could not carry us. Our company’s strong commitment to data-driven decision allows a deeper comprehension into what is truly going on and allowing our decisions to be targeted and fact-based, rather than theoretical and estimated.

“Let the Data Talk”

Nick Vass, J29 Inc.

 As companies continue to navigate through unchartered territories in remote work environments, it’s important for some of our teams to stay true to the countless acts that led our success to where it is. While the way we do business has been changed in the moment, the question of how we came to that decision-making process will stay true – by letting data have a seat at the table.

What does this mean? For our team at J29, we like to live by the phrase, “let the data talk.” While cliché at first, it’s important for us to stay true to our model of data driven decision making. From the time I first joined J29 to now, there are some key attributes that stand out:

• Robust emphasis on collecting several fields of data
• Consistent investment in improving our tools and skills to comprehend that data
• Commitment to making data widely accessible
• Office-wide willingness to listen to data-driven ideas that come through any level of our organization

Lastly, the continuous dedication to decisions being driven by data has always been an ongoing improvement. Simply put, our team strives to make sure that data silos are addressed and resolved before critical problems arise. Data silos can be cultural, technological, or even structural-based inadequacies in any department or organization. More times than not, a silo in place causes wasted resources and limited productivity to take care of a company’s most important asset – data.

Data silos prevent teams from seeing the bigger picture, and more importantly being able to have continued data-driven decision making. For J29, a data silo can prevent us from recognizing a security threats sooner and analyzing traffic for unusual patterns. By definition, a data silo is when only one team is able to access a certain data set or source of that data – creating inefficiencies when cross-collaboration and wide-spread project involvement is necessary.

Currently, J29 is supporting a state-of-the-art data consolidation project revolving around integrations to the State of Maryland’s new Total Human-service Integrated Network (MD THINK) platform. This revolutionary platform will be the first of its kind in the United States, thus solving a data silo issue of Maryland’s Social Service Administration, Family Investment Administration, and Child Support Administration not being able to cross reference data sets in dire times of need. Prior programs were buried deep in conflicting architectures, resulting in massive spending’s on maintenance and restrictions for modifications. Coming full circle with J29’s MD THINK works, the importance of having data drive your team is validly crucial to success. In the case of Maryland, a joint human-service decision to having data on a single, integrated platform will allow user groups access to a modernized cloud-based platform – eliminating duplicate data entry and creating a streamlined eligibility enrollment process.

When the final whistle sounds on developments and integrations, over 30,000 Marylanders will have access to more than 65 application environments and 30 AWS products – eliminating previously restricting data silos and allowing data-driven decision making to lead health and human services throughout Maryland.

In conclusion, for J29 we consider data to have a consistent seat at the “table” that allows for our team to deeply analyze where our decisions could, or could not carry us. Our company’s strong commitment to data-driven decision allows a deeper comprehension into what is truly going on and allowing our decisions to be targeted and fact-based, rather than theoretical and estimated.