Cohort 
2016

Mircea Balasa, MD, PhD

Behavioral Neurologist

An early diagnosis will offer the time window for disease modifying intervention and advanced care planning.

Current Work

Mircea is a neurologist in the Alzheimer's Disease and Other Cognitive Disorders Unit at Hospital Clinic Barcelona, Spain.

Personal Hero

His parents

Words of Strength

Persistence leads to success

Vision

Mircea believes we need to enhance the training of healthcare professionals and increase the diagnostic capabilities with the goal to provide an early-diagnosis of those affected. An early diagnosis will offer the time window for disease modifying intervention and advanced care planning.

Strategy

Mircea is developing new tools for an early diagnosis of cognitive impairment. He is also interested in new modalities of patient engagement for an early identification of cognitive decline in the general population.

Impact

Through collaborative projects with the GBHI community, Mircea is working to provide an accurate and early diagnosis of people affected by neurodegenerative cognitive impairment.

Motivation

Cognitive impairment is underdiagnosed. More dementia training and an increased ease of access to diagnosis is needed to adequately address the challenge.

Education & Experience

Mircea obtained his MD at the University of Lérida, Spain, his neurology degree at Hospital Clinic Barcelona and his PhD focused in early-onset cognitive impairment at the University of Barcelona. He is an Atlantic Senior Fellow for Equity in Brain Health (Trinity College Dublin). He works as a cognitive neurologist in the Alzheimer's disease and Other Cognitive Disorders Unit at Hospital Clinic Barcelona. His research interest are the use of multimodal biomarkers for an early/diagnosis of neurodegenerative dementias having authored more than 50 research papers over the last years.