If you hap­pen to be in Barcelona, Spain, on Sep­tem­ber 14th, make sure to attend Alvaro Fer­nan­dez talk there titled “How and Why Dig­i­tal Tech­nol­ogy Will Trans­form Edu­ca­tion, Train­ing and Brain Health”.

• Date: 14/09/2010
• Time: 19:00
• Place: ESADEFORUM. Av. Pedralbes 60–62.

Descrip­tion: You have a brain. Make it reflect on this provoca­tive vision of how the con­ver­gence of demo­graphic and polit­i­cal trends with the dis­cov­er­ies of neu­ro­science and dig­i­tal tech­nol­ogy can give rise to a global mar­ket capa­ble of trans­form­ing the way in which we develop and main­tain our brains, in order to attain the high­est pos­si­ble level of brain health and per­for­mance through­out our lives. The neu­ro­sci­en­tist Ramón y Cajal once said: “Every man can, if he so desires, become the sculp­tor of his own brain”. This has become a pre­vail­ing desire, pro­moted by baby boomers who, as they approach their 60th birth­day, embark on a search for life­long “brain fitness”.

Learn more and Reg­is­ter Here.

Dr. John Docherty is an Adjunct Pro­fes­sor of Psy­chi­a­try at the Weill Med­ical Col­lege, Cor­nell Uni­ver­sity, Direc­tor of Post Grad­u­ate Edu­ca­tion there, and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer of Brain Resource. Trained as a clin­i­cal research fel­low in neu­ropsy­chophar­ma­col­ogy at NIMH, he later returned as Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Research Branch, respon­si­ble for all fed­er­ally sup­ported psy­choso­cial treat­ment research in men­tal health nation­wide. He over­saw the land­mark National Col­lab­o­ra­tive Study of the Treat­ment of Depres­sion and served as a mem­ber and Chair­man for over 10 years on the NIMH and then NIDA Treat­ment Research IRGs. Dr. Docherty has wide expe­ri­ence in suc­cess­fully imple­ment­ing inno­va­tion in both clin­i­cal oper­a­tions and man­aged health care. He founded North­east Psy­chi­atric Asso­ciates in 1985. As National Med­ical Direc­tor for National Med­ical Enter­prises, he over­saw med­ical con­trol and qual­ity improve­ment in 74 hos­pi­tals in 34 states. He was the Exec­u­tive Vice-President and Chief Med­ical Offi­cer for Merit Behav­ioral Care, which then cov­ered 30 mil­lion peo­ple. In 1998, he founded Com­pre­hen­sive Neu­ro­Science (CNS). Its Care Man­age­ment Tech­nolo­gies are cur­rently imple­mented in 17 state Med­ic­aid plans. Dr Docherty has received numer­ous hon­ors and awards and has authored over 100 sci­en­tific publications.

(Editor’s note: this inter­view with Dr. John Docherty was orig­i­nally pub­lished in Sharp­Brains’ mar­ket report Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan, pub­lished in July 2010)

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez: Dr. Docherty, it is a plea­sure to be with you today to dis­cuss the main theme of Sharp­Brains’ 2010 mar­ket report – how the con­ver­gence of sci­en­tific find­ings and tech­nol­ogy plat­forms and tools is reshap­ing how as a soci­ety and as indi­vid­u­als we will take care of cog­ni­tion and men­tal well­ness along the life­course, giv­ing birth to the emerg­ing dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness mar­ket. Can you first briefly dis­cuss your career tra­jec­tory and your cur­rent role at Brain Resource?

Dr. John Docherty: Sure. The main theme of my work since the 1960s has remained the same, “How do we put knowl­edge into effec­tive use to improve men­tal health?” Over the last cen­tury, med­i­cine made tremen­dous progress in gen­er­at­ing sci­en­tific and clin­i­cal knowl­edge. Basic research dis­cov­ery sci­ence and clin­i­cal treat­ment devel­op­ment sci­ence have made great progress. Within Psy­chi­a­try there was stan­dard set­ting advance in the 1960’s through the NIMH-VA coop­er­a­tive stud­ies to the method­ol­ogy of assess­ing the effi­cacy of psy­chophar­ma­co­log­i­cal drugs. This work estab­lished prin­ci­ples adopted for the study of med­ica­tions in the other areas of med­i­cine. The study of psy­chother­apy, how­ever, lagged in devel­op­ment. In my role of Chief of the Psy­choso­cial Treat­ments Branch of the NIMH , I helped con­tribute to the advance of that work by sup­port­ing the efforts of an extra­or­di­nary group of indi­vid­u­als led by Irene Waskow who car­ried out the TDCRP. This study estab­lished the method­olo­gies that made pos­si­ble the effec­tive sci­en­tific study of the effi­cacy of psy­chother­a­pies. The evi­dence base and of such treat­ments as CBT, DBT, Moti­va­tional Enhance­ment Treat­ment and other evidence-based psy­chother­a­pies derives directly from this study and its sem­i­nal influ­ence. This was a con­tri­bu­tion to the sci­ence of Clin­i­cal Treat­ment Devel­op­ment research.

I would say that my major inter­est, how­ever, has been in the next step, the sci­ence of knowl­edge trans­fer. There has been and remains a long and costly (in terms par­tic­u­larly of unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing) lag between the devel­op­ment of new knowl­edge and its com­mon and effec­tive use in practice.

In order the help the field moved for­ward, I have worked for the last 20 years in the devel­op­ment and imple­men­ta­tion of meth­ods to effec­tively trans­fer knowl­edge into prac­tice. Read the rest of this entry »

In spite of the recent eco­nomic down­turn, rev­enues for dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies to assess, enhance and treat cog­ni­tion, or dig­i­tal brain health and fit­ness tools, grew 35% in 2009. “The con­ver­gence of demo­graphic and pol­icy trends with cog­ni­tive neu­ro­science dis­cov­er­ies and tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion is giv­ing birth to a nascent mar­ket­place that can fun­da­men­tally trans­form what brain health is, how it is mea­sured, and how it is done,” says Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, mem­ber of the World Eco­nomic Forum’s Coun­cil on the Aging Soci­ety and Editor-in-Chief of the report. “This ground­break­ing report can help pio­neers shape the emerg­ing toolkit to ben­e­fit an aging soci­ety that increas­ingly seeks new ways to enhance cog­ni­tive func­tion­al­ity and men­tal well­ness across the lifespan.”

“As the brain is thrust into the cen­ter of the health­care ecosys­tem, inno­v­a­tive cog­ni­tive health and brain fit­ness appli­ca­tions will play an increas­ingly impor­tant role in defin­ing neu­ro­cen­tric health,” adds Jake Duna­gan, Research Direc­tor at the Insti­tute For The Future.

Report: Trans­form­ing Brain Health with Dig­i­tal Tools to Assess, Enhance and Treat Cog­ni­tion across the Lifes­pan: The State of the Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket 2010.

A major­ity among the 1,900+ decision-makers and early-adopters sur­veyed said they trusted the effec­tive­ness of non-invasive options above inva­sive options to enhance crit­i­cal brain func­tion­al­ity. Pro­fes­sional and intel­lec­tual chal­lenges were rated very effec­tive by 61% of respon­dents, aer­o­bic exer­cise and read­ing books by 42%, med­i­ta­tion by 38%, com­put­er­ized brain train­ing by 26%, tak­ing pre­scrip­tion drugs by 13%, tak­ing sup­ple­ments by 12%, and self-medicating with drugs by 1%.

These are among the key find­ings of a 207-page mar­ket report released today by Sharp­Brains and pre­pared in col­lab­o­ra­tion with 24 lead­ing sci­en­tists and 10 inno­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tions — the most com­pre­hen­sive such research study done to ana­lyze emerg­ing research, tech­nolo­gies and marketplace.

“We must do for brain health in the 21st cen­tury what we largely accom­plished in car­dio­vas­cu­lar health in the past cen­tury. It’s time to take sci­en­tific insights out of the lab and to iden­tify prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions, mak­ing the main­te­nance of good brain fit­ness a pub­lic health pri­or­ity,” indi­cates William Reich­man, MD, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Baycrest.

Other Report High­lights are: Read the rest of this entry »