Facing future challenges at the Dementia forum

Research is essential to fighting prolific diseases such as dementia and cancer, especially when the illnesses affect large numbers of the population.

Dementia is a growing problem in Australia, with 332,000 residents currently living with the disease, and numbers expected to reach 400,000 within 10 years. Without any significant breakthrough, they could reach 900,000 by 2050.

These statistics were released by the Alzheimer's Australia organisation, and paint a bleak picture – one that needs to be addressed.

The National Dementia Research Forum seeks to address this in part, by hosting discussions on how to best ensure cutting-edge research makes its way into clinical practice, and is actually utilised to tackle dementia.

The forum

The event is being over the course of a day in Sydney, at the Wesley Conference Centre on Friday 19th September 2014. It's open to consumers, aged care providers and researchers within the wider dementia and ageing space. A key theme of the event is knowledge translation, and different disciplines can work together with regards to research evidence uptake.

Professor Alison Hutchison

The keynote speaker for the event was recently announced as Professor Alison Hutchison, who's been heavily involved in both the aged care and dementia research sectors.

Currently, she is the professor of nursing at Deakin University and director of the Centre for Nursing Research, while also serving as the deputy director of the Quality and Patient Safety Strategic Research Centre at Deakin University.

In addition, she's the co-director of the Centre for Innovation and Education in Aged Care.

At the forum she will reveal certain findings surrounding knowledge translation, which will be extremely useful for aged care providers. Being able to ensure different disciplines can work effectively together will be invaluable as the aged care industry grows.

What do you think are the biggest opportunities for success in the aged care industry today? Please contact us and let us know!