Each year, the BrainCheck Pilot Grant supports early-stage, high-impact research that expands what’s possible in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD)—from detection and assessment to care planning and trial access. In 2025, we’re proud to support two projects that address critical gaps in dementia care and research: aligning caregiver observations with objective cognitive measures and improving community-based prescreening to accelerate equitable access to clinical trials and treatment.
2025 BrainCheck Pilot Grant Awardees
Bridging the Gap: Understanding Discrepancies Between Caregiver-Reported and Objective Cognition in Dementia Care Planning
Primary Investigator: Shaoqing Ge, PhD, Assistant Professor at The University of Texas at Austin School of Nursing
Caregivers play a vital role in dementia care, often providing the observations clinicians rely on to understand a person’s day-to-day cognitive function. But caregiver-reported cognition doesn’t always match what objective cognitive assessments show. This project investigates why those discrepancies occur and how they influence dementia care planning.
By identifying the mechanisms that drive misalignment, the research aims to lay the groundwork for interventions that improve caregiver education, reduce confusion and mismatched expectations, and strengthen care planning decisions, ultimately helping families and care teams navigate dementia with greater clarity and support.
This proposal advances understanding of how subjective and objective cognition interact in dementia care, with a strong alignment to BrainCheck’s mission to empower providers and caregivers with integrated digital cognitive tools designed to embed directly into existing clinical and care workflows. The findings could help inform practical approaches that improve the quality of dementia care.
RADDISH (Rapid Alzheimer’s and Dementia Detection, Intervention, and Strategic Health): Optimizing Participant Experience and Prescreening for Accelerated Alzheimer’s Clinical Trials and Treatment Access through Community-based Outreach and Telehealth
Primary Investigator: Tamiko MaGee Rodgers, PhD, Assistant Vice President, Trial Execution Services, at the Global Alzheimer’s Platform Foundation (GAP)
One of the biggest bottlenecks in Alzheimer’s research is identifying and recruiting eligible participants, especially participants from communities historically understudied in clinical research. RADDISH is designed to improve the participant experience while strengthening prescreening and readiness for clinical trials and treatment access.
Through community-based outreach and telehealth-enabled cognitive assessment, the project aims to make it easier for individuals to be identified earlier, evaluated more efficiently, and connected to research opportunities and care pathways, helping to accelerate clinical trial timelines while improving accessibility.
The RADDISH project directly addresses a major barrier in Alzheimer’s research: diverse participant identification, prescreening, and recruitment. Its community outreach and telehealth approach align with national priorities for equitable detection and support BrainCheck’s goal of enabling cognitive screening anytime and anywhere.
Why these projects matter
Together, these funded projects reflect two urgent needs in ADRD work today:
- Better alignment in dementia care planning, by understanding how caregiver perception and objective cognition can differ—and what to do when they do.
- More accessible and equitable pathways to research participation, by improving prescreening and reducing friction in trial recruitment through community outreach and telehealth.
BrainCheck’s Pilot Grant program is designed to support research that can translate into real-world improvements for patients, families, providers, and the broader research ecosystem.
Call for Applications: 2026 BrainCheck Pilot Grant
If you’re a researcher, clinician, health system, or organization working to advance Alzheimer’s and dementia detection, assessment, monitoring, care planning, or trial access, we encourage you to apply for the 2026 BrainCheck Pilot Grant.
What the BrainCheck Pilot Grant supports:
- Projects that advance cognitive screening, assessment, and/or care planning
- Work that increases the representation of population diversity
- Approaches that expand remote or community-based access to cognitive evaluation
- Research that integrates or compares digital and biological biomarkers
- Studies that support earlier detection and better clinical workflows
For more information, visit BrainCheck Pilot Grant or contact us at research@braincheck.com
