Abstract

The personal, social and economic burden of dementia is huge. It accounts for more years lived with disability than any other condition. Through its rigorous methods, The Cochrane Collaboration has improved the quality of primary research into clinical interventions for dementia. Through a programme of Cochrane DTA reviews we now have a similar opportunity to tighten the intellectual framework for the evaluation of diagnostic tests in dementia. The scope of the programme is twofold. A series of Diagnostic Test Accuracy (DTA) reviews will cover the full range of important imaging and laboratory biomarkers, and of simple clinical tests. A series of updates will focus on interventions, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological, which are currently in clinical use in the NHS. In addition to the publication of high quality reviews in the Cochrane Collaboration database, a strong emphasis will be put on integrating the results of the reviews in digested reports for policy development, health technology appraisal and commissioning in the NHS.