Mental health issue has been one of the main challenges worldwide. The Grand Challenges in Global Health has been established to deal with both neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative disorders such as schizophrenia and dementia. One of the top challenges includes developing and validating tools for early detection and intervention. Recently, Drs. Raymond CHAN and Juan LI from the CAS Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Institute of Psychology have been invited to join an international team led by Prof. Kim Graham from University of Cardiff, UK to develop a low-cost cognitive tool for dementia assessment in low and middle income countries.

The team has received a fund of a half million Euros from the Medical Research Council (MRC) and European Science Research Council (ESRC) from the first phase of the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) to specifically address issues affecting people in low and middle income countries using digital technology to provide low-cost but highly sensitive cognitive tools for dementia assessment. The brevity and easy to administer measure or tool of is necessary for the primary care clinicians to acquaint the less resource-demanding training and skills in the care for patients with dementia. It is a 3-year project involving key members from Cardiff University, the University of California at San Francisco, Ireland, China, and Cuba.