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. 2023 Aug 4;13(8):e067808.
doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2022-067808.

Oxford brain health clinic: protocol and research database

Melissa Clare O'Donoghue  1   2 , Jasmine Blane  1   2 , Grace Gillis  1   2 , Robert Mitchell  2 , Karen Lindsay  1   2 , Juliet Semple  1   2 , Pieter M Pretorius  3 , Ludovica Griffanti  1   2 , Jane Fossey  2   4 , Vanessa Raymont  1   2 , Lola Martos  1   2 , Clare E Mackay  5   2
Affiliations

Oxford brain health clinic: protocol and research database

Melissa Clare O'Donoghue et al. BMJ Open. .

Abstract

Introduction: Despite major advances in the field of neuroscience over the last three decades, the quality of assessments available to patients with memory problems in later life has barely changed. At the same time, a large proportion of dementia biomarker research is conducted in selected research samples that often poorly reflect the demographics of the population of patients who present to memory clinics. The Oxford Brain Health Clinic (BHC) is a newly developed clinical assessment service with embedded research in which all patients are offered high-quality clinical and research assessments, including MRI, as standard.

Methods and analysis: Here we describe the BHC protocol, including aligning our MRI scans with those collected in the UK Biobank. We evaluate rates of research consent for the first 108 patients (data collection ongoing) and the ability of typical psychiatry-led NHS memory-clinic patients to tolerate both clinical and research assessments.

Ethics and dissemination: Our ethics and consenting process enables patients to choose the level of research participation that suits them. This generates high rates of consent, enabling us to populate a research database with high-quality data that will be disseminated through a national platform (the Dementias Platform UK data portal).

Keywords: Dementia; Magnetic resonance imaging; Old age psychiatry; PSYCHIATRY.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: CEM is a cofounder and shareholder of Exprodo Software, which was used to develop the BHC database. CEM serves on a Biogen Brain Health Consortium (unpaid). No other competing interests to report.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of the Brain Health Clinic patient pathway and data flow.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Patient consent rates for each of the three research options offered at the Brain Health Clinic.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Demographics of patients consenting to join the Brain Health Clinic Research Database. (A) Patient age distribution. (B) ACE-III total score distribution. (C) Proportion of males and females. All figures shown for patients consenting to use of clinical data for research (n=101). ACE-III, Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Examination-III.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Consent and completion rates for additional patient research assessments.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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