Landmark Open Measures Network Initiative for Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias Will Develop Accessible Technologies to Support Dementia Prevention Research
Many Brains' expertise in digital cognitive testing and open science will help democratize brain health measurement
Belmont, MA – September 25, 2025 – The Many Brains Project (“Many Brains”), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing brain and cognitive health research, is among a network of leading research institutions participating in the newly launched "Open Measures Network Initiative for Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementia Research and Prevention" (OMNI ADRD). This landmark U24 grant from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute on Aging represents a transformative approach to early detection and prevention of Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. OMNI ADRD will be co-led by Martin Sliwinski, professor of human development and family studies and Gregory H. Wolf Professor of Healthy Aging at Penn State, Laura Thi Germine, chief of the Division of Brain and Cognitive Health Technology in the Department of Neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and President of Many Brains, Sy-Miin Chow, professor of human development and family studies and Social Science Research Institute co-funded faculty member at Penn State, and Duke Han, professor of psychology, family medicine, neurology and gerontology at the University of Southern California.
The OMNI ADRD network addresses a critical gap in dementia prevention research: the need for precise, accessible tools that can detect subtle cognitive changes in midlife—years before symptoms become apparent. Traditional neuropsychological assessments were designed to detect existing impairment, not the early changes that occur when prevention interventions could be most effective. The network brings together investigators from across the country to develop and share scientifically vetted cognitive and behavioral tools that are scalable, precise, and usable in real-world clinical and community settings.
Many Brains brings critical expertise to the OMNI ADRD consortium through its stewardship of TestMyBrain, one of the world's oldest online digital research platforms for cognitive testing. Across more than 20 years of research and development, TestMyBrain has tested over 3.7 million people globally, making it one of the most widely used remote digital cognitive assessment platforms worldwide. TestMyBrain supports over 2,000 research studies across 41 countries, including major NIH projects like the All of Us Research Program."
Our mission has always been to develop tools that directly address the needs of patients and communities," said Dr. Laura Thi Germine, who co-leads the OMNI ADRD network and Many Brains. "OMNI ADRD represents the next stage of this work, to build digital technology that works for everyone —creating truly open, accessible tools that can support dementia prevention efforts across diverse communities and around the world."
A key challenge in current brain health research is the dominance of proprietary, single-provider assessment platforms that limit flexibility and impede community-driven innovation. Many existing tools operate under restrictive licensing that prevents researchers from modifying, translating, or adapting assessments to meet specific population needs.
OMNI ADRD will address these limitations by creating a national open-access platform to host these cognitive tools along with scoring algorithms, documentation, and integration guides to support adoption across research and clinical settings. The network will also harmonize existing data from NIH-funded projects, coordinate strategic pilot studies to fill critical measurement gaps, and ensure that tools are applicable and accessible to populations often underserved in dementia research.
Many Brains will play a central role in developing and disseminating open tools and educational content, ensuring that advanced measurement technologies are accessible to researchers regardless of their technical expertise or institutional resources. Head of Research & Development, , PhD, will lead the development of the OMNI ADRD open-access platform and Head of Psychometrics & Data Analytics, R, PhD,l lead cognitive test development and validation at Many Brains.
The OMNI ADRD initiative places particular emphasis on developing tools that work effectively across diverse populations. Many existing cognitive assessments were created for English-speaking individuals with high levels of formal education, limiting their relevance for broader segments of the aging population.
Many Brains will help address this challenge by supporting the translation and cultural adaptation of assessments, beginning with Spanish-language implementations, and by ensuring that digital tools are intuitive and engaging for people across different backgrounds, education levels, and technological proficiencies.
The OMNI ADRD platform will provide researchers with three key resources: a comprehensive repository of validated measures with full supporting documentation, a cross-device digital cognitive assessment toolkit supporting everything from smartphones to tablets to desktops, and flexible data management tools that can integrate with existing research infrastructure while maintaining the highest security standards.
This initiative comes at a critical time, as the field increasingly recognizes that successful dementia prevention will require precise measurement of subtle changes in cognitive function—changes that current assessment approaches often miss. By focusing on midlife populations and leveraging high-frequency monitoring techniques, OMNI ADRD aims to provide the sensitive tools needed to evaluate prevention interventions before waiting decades for clinical outcomes.
OMNI ADRD is launching in September 2025 and is funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (U24 AG092760).
Founded on principles of open science and participant-centered research, the Many Brains Project (a Massachusetts-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit) develops state-of-the-art digital tools to assess cognition and brain health while delivering results directly to participants. The organization runs TestMyBrain.org and supports some of the largest digital cognitive assessment initiatives in health and science, with a 20-year track record of innovation in making brain research more accessible, inclusive, and impactful. For more information, visit www.manybrains.net and www.testmybrain.org.
The OMNI ADRD initiative represents a new chapter in the organization's mission to democratize brain health research and support the development of more effective prevention strategies for Alzheimer's disease and related dementias.
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The Many Brains Project is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating research on the mind and brain by developing research tools that directly address the needs of patients and participants.
