Risk assessment tool from UK company proven to be one of world's most accurate predictors of dementia and other diseases

NOTTINGHAM, United Kingdom, Nov. 30, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ROADTOHEALTH, the Digital Health Global 100 company behind award-winning health application Quealth, announced the successful clinical validation of its dementia¹ risk assessment, making it a world leader in the accurate prediction of the disease.

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"Quealth's risk algorithm has been optimised and validated to an excellent level of predictive accuracy for dementia," said Paul Nash, Quealth's Head of Clinical Governance. "It has a 72% chance of distinguishing individuals at risk of developing dementia from those who are not at risk. This is comparable with leading international risk scores including CAIDE², DSDRS³, BDSI⁴ and ANU-ADRI⁵."

Quealth is a free health app that allows anyone to assess their risk of developing the five most common lifestyle-driven diseases: dementia, cardiovascular disease (CVD), type 2 diabetes, six forms of cancer, and chronic obstructive pulmonary (lung) disease (COPD).

Quealth is governed by an ongoing programme of formal clinical validation led by Nash in collaboration with Quealth's clinical advisor, Dr Stephen Weng, an Applied Epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham's School of Medicine. The programme ensures the predictive accuracy of its disease risk algorithms is both optimised and academically validated.

The key measure of how predictive accuracy is normally assessed is based on the 'AUC (c-statistic)'. This is a measure of how accurately the algorithm will predict the disease.

Quealth's disease risk algorithms achieve AUC values of between 0.72 and 0.80. This high level of predictive accuracy is directly comparable to – and in many cases higher than – other internationally recognised and respected disease risk prediction algorithms:

"Quealth is a consumer-friendly application developed using rigorous scientific methods and has proven extremely accurate when assessing an individual's future risk of disease across multiple health conditions, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia and COPD," said Dr Weng. 

Quealth is available for download via Apple's App Store, the Google Play Store, Samsung's Galaxy Apps Store and Lenovo's App Explorer.

Notes:

¹ Dementia has now overtaken heart disease as the leading cause of death in England and Wales, accounting for 11.6% of all deaths registered in 2015 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredinenglandandwalesseriesdr/2015

² CAIDE (Cardiovascular Risk Factors, Aging and Dementia) is a Scandinavian initiative and a joint collaboration between the Department of Neurology, University of Eastern Finland (Kuopio Campus), the National Institute of Health and Welfare (Helsinki) and the Aging Research Center, Karolinksa Institutet (Stockholm) http://www.uef.fi/en/web/caide/

³ DSDRS (Diabetes-Specific Dementia Risk Score) was funded by the United States National Institute of Health, Kaiser Permanente Community Benefits, Utrecht University, ZonMw, the Netherlands Organisation for Health Research and Development and a Fulbright fellowship https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4429783/

⁴ BDSI (Behavioural Dysexecutive Syndrome Inventory) is an ongoing French study by the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire (Amiens) https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02819700

⁵ ANU-ADRI (Australian National University's Alzheimer's Disease Risk Index) is a tool developed by the Australian National University (Canberra) http://anuadri.anu.edu.au

Quealth www.quealth.co is the most accurate health risk assessment app available. It assesses your health, coaches you to make improvements and rewards your successes. Quealth combines the latest behavioural change science with the global reach of technology to encourage you to make lifestyle changes and live a longer, healthier life. Based on the award-winning and highly validated Quealth™ Score – a universally recognised and trusted predictor of health risk – Quealth focusses on the prevention of five leading non-communicable diseases: diabetes, six forms of cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Quealth is owned by the roadtohealth group, an internationally-recognised health risk assessment and lifestyle management company. Formed in 2002, roadtohealth has successfully developed an international footprint by partnering with global brands including Aviva, Samsung, Patient.info and HSBC.

All products or brand names mentioned are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

© Copyright 2016 roadtohealth group.

For further information, PR Contact: Barbara Marshall, Barbara.marshall@quealth.co, +1 514 501 8533

Related Links

http://www.quealth.co

SOURCE Quealth