Longitude Prize on Dementia

What Longitude Prize on Dementia does

The Longitude Prize on Dementia is a £4 million+ challenge prize competition administered by Challenge Works, a not-for-profit enterprise owned by the Nesta foundation. The prize is designed to drive the creation of personalized, technology-based tools that help people living with early-stage dementia maintain independence in daily activities. Solutions are required to be co-created with people living with early-stage dementia, embedding end-user input into the development process. The competition followed a structured multi-stage format: Discovery Awards (175+ ideas entering in 2022), a semi-finalist programme (£1.9 million disbursed in 2023), five finalist teams, and a £1 million grand prize awarded in 2024.

The competition's technology focus is AI-powered assistive technology, validated through the 2024 grand prize award to CrossSense — a smart glasses solution with a built-in AI-powered assistant that uses computer vision to identify everyday objects and an autonomous agent framework to guide users through daily activities. Other entries spanning the prize lifecycle included smart gloves, games-based interventions, and tablet applications. Amazon Web Services provided skills-building, technical support, innovation sessions, and mentoring to the most promising innovators, indicating a multimodal AI development pipeline combining visual perception with conversational guidance.

The Longitude Prize on Dementia is not a commercial enterprise — it does not charge customers, sell products, or generate revenue from sales. It disburses committed prize capital to competing innovator teams across staged milestones. Funding is sourced from Alzheimer's Society (the UK's leading dementia charity) and Innovate UK (the UK's innovation agency), with additional support from the Medical Research Council, The Hunter Foundation, CareTech Foundation, and individual donor Heather Corrie. Challenge Works handles operational execution under the Nesta parent, with operating geographies spanning the UK, EU, USA, and Canada via outreach partners.

Name

Longitude Prize on Dementia

Legal name

Challenge Works

Website

https://dementia.longitudeprize.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Short description

The Longitude Prize on Dementia is a £4 million+ UK-based challenge prize administered by Challenge Works (Nesta) that funds AI-powered assistive technologies for people with early-stage dementia, culminating in the £1 million 2024 grand prize awarded to CrossSense.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Challenge Prize Programs

NAICS

Scientific Research and Development Services (5417)

akta.pro primary industry

Dementia & Wandering-Safety 24/7 In-Home Care (HSABAHAE)

Keywords

• Challenge prize competition
• Dementia assistive technology
• AI social innovation
• Health innovation funding
• Aging technology grants

Headquarters

HQ city

London

HQ country

United Kingdom

HQ region

Europe

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Services

Cost components

Others, Operations, Personnel, Marketing or Sales

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels3 records

Core offering

The Longitude Prize on Dementia is a £4 million+ challenge prize competition that funds the development of personalized, technology-based tools co-created with people living with early-stage dementia. The multi-stage programme includes Discovery Awards (175 ideas), a Semi-Finalist programme (£1.9 million in co-creation funding), a Finalist cohort (5 teams), and a £1 million grand prize. The 2024 winning solution, CrossSense, is a smart glasses product with a built-in AI-powered assistant that identifies everyday objects and guides users through daily activities.

Product overview

The Longitude Prize on Dementia is a £4 million+ challenge prize competition (not a unified product) designed to drive the creation of personalized, technology-based tools for people living with early-stage dementia. The prize programme includes Discovery Awards funding for early-stage ideas, a semi-finalist programme (£1.9m co-creation funding), a finalist selection of 5 teams, and culminates in a £1 million grand prize. The winning solution, CrossSense, is a smart glasses product with built-in AI that identifies objects and guides users through daily activities. The prize is administered by Challenge Works and supported by partners including Alzheimer's Society and Innovate UK.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Longitude Prize on Dementia A £4 million+ challenge prize competition created to drive the creation of personalized, technology-based tools that are co-created with people living with the early stages of dementia, helping them live independent, more fulfilled lives.
• CrossSense A pioneering smart glasses solution with a built-in AI-powered assistant that identifies everyday objects and guides people living with early-stage dementia through daily activities, helping them maintain independence.
• Discovery Awards Early-stage funding programme that accepted 175 brilliant ideas entering the Longitude Prize on Dementia, providing initial support to promising dementia technology innovations.
• Semi-Finalist Programme

Segments2 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability4 records

Feature1 record

Partnerships

Ten partnerships are on record, tiered flagship and core.

• Alzheimer's SocietyflagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerUK's leading dementia charity and vital source of support. Primary organizer alongside Challenge Works, providing strategic direction and additional funding through donors.
• Challenge WorksflagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerNot-for-profit enterprise owned by Nesta that designs and creates challenge prizes. Has successfully set over 81 challenges with total prize pot of £160M.
• Medical Research Council (MRC)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerFunds research at the forefront of science to prevent illness, develop therapies and improve human health.
• AgeWell (Canada)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCanadian network bringing together stakeholders to develop technologies and services for healthy aging. Training next generation of innovators and making Canada a world leader.
• AARP (USA)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerNation's largest nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to empowering Americans 50 and older to choose how they live as they age.
• Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCanada's federal funding agency for health research, providing innovator outreach support for North America.
• Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation (CABHI)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerPowered by Baycrest, helps innovators develop, disseminate, scale, and promote adoption of promising innovations in the aging and brain health sector.
• MEDTEQ+ (Canada)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaborative industry-led projects to accelerate innovation and position Canadian medical technologies on a global scale.
• Social Tech TrustcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerUK's leading dedicated investor of socially motivated tech. Charity challenging relationship between tech and society, providing investment and support for high potential social tech ventures.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)coreTechnology or IntegrationWorld's most comprehensive cloud platform. Providing skills-building, technical support, guidance, innovation sessions and mentoring to most promising innovators in the Longitude Prize on Dementia.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves5 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Broad incumbents

• Wellcome Trust: Wellcome is a major UK-based charitable foundation supporting health-related research and innovation. Like the Alzheimer's Society/Innovate UK consortium behind the Longitude Prize, Wellcome combines health-research funding with innovation ecosystem building at significant scale.
• Nesta: Nesta is the parent foundation that owns Challenge Works and is the UK's innovation foundation focused on social impact through innovation. Longitude Prize on Dementia is administered under Nesta's structure, making Nesta the institutional parent and comparable broader innovation funder.

Direct peers

• XPRIZE Foundation: XPRIZE is the most established global challenge-prize organization, running large-cash competitions to drive breakthrough innovation across health, energy, and exploration. It is structurally identical to Challenge Works/L longitude Prize — non-profit that designs, funds, and disseminates prize challenges to catalyze breakthrough technologies.
• Alzheimer's Research UK: Alzheimer's Research UK is the UK's leading dementia research charity, funding scientific research into dementia causes and treatments. It is a UK-based, dementia-focused funding organization with overlapping mission to Longitude Prize on Dementia's dementia technology development.
• OpenIDEO: OpenIDEO runs open innovation challenges to crowdsource solutions to social problems using a structured community-based methodology. It mirrors the Longitude Prize's approach of using curated challenge programs to surface breakthrough ideas from distributed innovator networks.
• Wazoku (formerly InnoCentive): Wazoku (formerly InnoCentive) operates an open innovation and challenge-prize platform that connects organizations with solvers worldwide. It is a direct commercial analog to Challenge Works, monetizing the curation and management of prize-style R&D competitions.
• HeroX: HeroX is a crowdsourced innovation and challenge-prize platform that helps organizations design and run competitions to solve defined problems. It directly mirrors the Longitude Prize's model of curating entrants and awarding prize funding to top solutions.

Regional players

• Alzheimer's Association (US): The Alzheimer's Association is the largest US-based voluntary health organization addressing Alzheimer's and dementia through research, care, and support. Comparable as a dementia-focused non-profit funder though its primary geography (US) differs from the Longitude Prize's UK anchor.

Emerging players

• ALS Association: The ALS Association has deployed challenge-prize-style mechanisms (e.g., the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge funding model, prize programs) to drive neurodegenerative-disease breakthroughs. Comparable structurally as a disease-focused non-profit leveraging prizes and curated competitions.
• MedTech Innovator: MedTech Innovator is the largest medical-technology accelerator and competition program, running structured competitions to identify and support medtech startups. It mirrors the Discovery → Semi-Final → Final → Grand Prize progression used by the Longitude Prize on Dementia.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xtwitter.com/Challenge_Works
• Facebookfacebook.com/ChallengeWorksUK
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/Challenge-Works
• Instagraminstagram.com/challengeworksuk

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments2 records

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Longitude Prize on Dementia