Strategic Intent: Can Blood Tests Break the Alzheimer’s Diagnosis Bottleneck?

Disease-modifying Alzheimer’s treatments have arrived, but diagnosing the right patients at scale is still a major bottleneck. In this episode of Strategic Intent, Marion Webb (MedTech Insight) speaks with Dr. Soeren Mattke, research professor of economics at USC, director of the Brain Health Observatory, and member of the scientific advisory board of ALZpath, about how FDA-cleared blood tests are changing the picture.

They cover why amyloid PET scans and spinal taps struggle to scale, how p-tau217 blood tests work and who makes them, and how primary care doctors can use them to prioritize patients and better prepare referrals to overstretched neurologists. They also discuss test limitations, including false positives and the potential of misdiagnosis when patients have other diseases like kidney disease and obesity, why screening people without symptoms isn’t recommended yet, and the economics: roughly $5,000 for a PET scan versus about $125 for a Medicare-reimbursed blood test.

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