Australian House of Representatives Inquiry into Dementia: early diagnosis and detection

There are a number of fascinating submissions to this recent inquiry, viewable at:

http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/House_of_Representatives_Committees?url=haa/dementia/subs.htm

It is interesting to see the number of submissions that promote a particular service or service model.
I haven't read all of them yet, but the model described by Professor Philip Morris (#4) sounds excellent, taking a rehabilitation approach to dementia care. The submission made by my colleagues at the community dementia team (#14) describes an initiative that has been beneficial in a community setting. The Tasmanian DHHS submission (#41) has some very sobering statistics for my home state, and the federal department of health submission (#89) is also sobering.

I like the practical recommendations made by the Victorian CDAMS submission (#39). The Victorian Office of the Public Advocate (#3) wrote an interesting submission in terms of decision-making capacity and dementia, and Professor Jillian Krill (#6) argued about the vital importance of correct diagnosis of dementia, if targeted treatments are going to become available. The practicalities of getting postmortem examinations on people with dementia are challenging, but we need to have the postmortem gold standard available to clarify the relationship between clinical symptoms and pathology if targeted pharmacological therapies are going to be developed.

The Australian Psychological Society wrote a good submission with the assistance of members of the College of Clinical Neuropsychologists (#50), and I contributed my own submission in the hope that there would be at least one neuropsychologist's voice heard by the enquiry (#46). My submission isn't perfect, but hopefully it will back up the poignant voices of the various consumers and carers who talked about the difficult time between development of symptoms and diagnosis.

In case I'm called to give evidence to the Inquiry, Any suggestions on succinct things I can say to demonstrate the efficacy of neuropsychologists in early diagnosis and interventions for dementia would be appreciated.