Can virtual clinics fill the dementia care gap?

It’s no secret dementia specialists are stretched to their limits.

July 2024 research estimates 34%–59% of people aged 65+ live in an area with a shortage of neurologists, geriatricians, and geriatric psychiatrists. This puts much of the burden of diagnosing and treating dementia on primary care providers, some of whom say they are unprepared to help the rising numbers of people with dementia.

Providers are turning to telehealth to narrow that gap.

Digital treatment is offered by major health systems like Chicago-based Northwestern Medicine, which launched a virtual memory care clinic in 2024. In addition, private virtual dementia care startups have popped up, like Isaac Health, founded in 2022 and backed by venture capital firms including Flare Capital Partners and Meridian Street Capital. Major payers like Medicare have gotten on board, too. Experts in the field caution, however, that while digital diagnosis and treatment has promise, the field is still gathering evidence and shaping best practice guidelines.

“The entrepreneurial excitement that this might generate must be balanced with careful evaluation of service processes, outcomes, and accountability,” Soo Borson, co-lead of the CDC-backed BOLD Center of Excellence on Early Detection of Dementia, told Healthcare Brew over email.

A necessary step. A 2021 review found telehealth assessments diagnose dementia with 80% to 100% accuracy compared to in-person assessments. There’s also evidence these virtual clinics improve access and shorten wait times for care, in part because people with mobility issues don’t have to leave their homes for care. Patients’ families can also take part in appointments even if they live in different states, Jennifer Woodward, director of Northwestern’s geriatric virtual memory care program, told Healthcare Brew.

Waitlists for Northwestern’s virtual memory clinic are only about four to six weeks. In comparison, the health system’s in-person geriatric primary care clinic has an approximately year-long wait, Woodward said.

Isaac Health typically has wait times of two weeks or less, co-founder and CEO Julius Bruch told Healthcare Brew. These quicker appointment times could make a huge difference given the average time between dementia symptom onset and diagnosis is 3.5 years, per a July 2025 meta analysis.

Evidence is growing. Despite growing evidence in their favor, virtual memory clinics are still “very new,” Woodward added. “There still needs to be some studies around comparing the care that you can do virtually [to] the care you can do in person,” she said.

Sheena Aurora, VP of medical affairs at the Alzheimer’s Association, told Healthcare Brew virtual diagnosis is helpful but it’s “not a replacement for complete clinical care,” which is still crucial for things such as physical assessments.

“It’s still in its early stages. So we need more data. We need more claims data to measure the true impact,” she said.

There’s not yet been any formal guidance or standards for virtual memory care from professional organizations like the American Academy of Neurology, Gerontological Society of America, or Alzheimer’s Association, the groups told us. “Detailed standards for offering programs like this need to be articulated and vetted within the field,” Borson said.

A tale of two clinics. Amid this lack of universal standards, virtual memory clinics vary in their approaches and scope.

Northwestern’s clinic is staffed exclusively with board-certified geriatricians, Woodward said. At the end of 2025, it had served 150+ patients, per a December release. In contrast, Isaac Health is a much bigger operation, treating nearly 3,000 active patients, Bruch said.

Isaac Health’s care model involves employing a “core” group of behavioral neurologists who oversee care and can be called for consultations, but ongoing care is managed by “extenders,” who are other types of providers including geriatricians as well as nurse practitioners or primary care physicians. These extenders receive AI-enabled guidance and prompts, along with an algorithm that internal research suggests is over 90% accurate at flagging patients who may have undiagnosed cognitive impairment, though there’s no published peer-reviewed research confirming these results yet, Bruch said.

“The goal is really that a nurse practitioner or a primary care or geriatrics-trained doctor can essentially diagnose and treat dementia on our platform at the level of a behavioral neurologist,” he said.