Jakub Hort included among the best doctors in the Czech Republic for 2025

At the beginning of the new year, Forbes has compiled a selection of the fifty best doctors in the Czech Republic. And the International Clinical Research Center (ICRC) is honored that it has a representative on the list: scientist from the Dementia research team, neurologist Jakub Hort.

The editorial team of the prestigious Forbes magazine publishes a list every year of the fifty best doctors in the Czech Republic. The selected names represent dozens of fields and institutions.

And the International Clinical Research Center (ICRC), a joint workplace of FNUSA and LF MU, is proud to have one of its representatives among the fifty names: Professor Jakub Hort, who leads the Cognitive Center at the Neurological Clinic at Motol University Hospital and works as a researcher at the ICRC in the Dementia team. For many years, he has been combining medical practice with scientific work, which, according to him, is not always an easy task.

“It’s really challenging, but clinical research requires us to be in contact with patients and publish real results about real people. Patients are not just numbers in a statistic, and it’s important to always see a specific person with specific issues when interpreting the results. There is no Alzheimer’s disease, only a specific patient with Alzheimer’s disease, which may manifest a bit differently in each person. So, the combination of medical and scientific work is, on the one hand, time-consuming, but at the same time enriching. An advantage is also that some procedures and data collection can overlap, as well as cooperation with colleagues from neurology and other fields. This allows for finding a number of synergies that make it easier,” says Jakub Hort.

Challenges of Modern Neurology? AI, New Technologies, and the Risk of Losing a Holistic Approach

According to him, modern neurology faces several challenges. “I believe the field is increasingly segmenting into subfields, which brings the possibility of greater specialization, expertise, and the ability to absorb a wealth of new knowledge and apply it in clinical practice. However, excessive specialization and segmentation naturally bring several difficulties and challenges, where there is a risk that we may not be able to look at patients holistically enough, solve their problems at the intersections of these subfields, and that an overarching perspective may be lacking,” he points out.

He also notes that new technologies are increasingly infiltrating neurology, which must constantly be monitored, learned, and, most importantly, properly utilized. “This includes artificial intelligence, imaging methods, and new medications,” he specifies.

These technologies are costly and require qualifications, which can highlight the shortage of qualified doctors and pose a major challenge for healthcare budgets, organization, and logistics. “For example, the new biological treatment for Alzheimer’s disease using monoclonal antibodies requires drug administration by infusions every 14 days and the need to monitor safety. Last but not least, a challenge is also the fact that the importance of clinical findings is diminishing, and the growing role of findings from auxiliary imaging methods may lead to a certain depersonalization of medicine,” he reflects.

Biggest Success? The Ability to Offer Top Care to the Greatest Number of Patients

Looking back on his career at the International Clinical Research Center (ICRC), he considers the Czech Brain Aging Study, a longitudinal observational study focused on aging and dementia, to be groundbreaking. He worked on the project with neurologist Kateřina Sheardová, who took over the leadership of the Dementia research team at the beginning of 2025.

The study combined clinical care with clinical research, and ICRC collaborated with the Neurological Clinic at Motol University Hospital, where Hort works as a physician. “We managed to implement protocols used at top institutions in the USA, adapt them to our population, and furthermore, develop some completely unique non-pharmacological intervention procedures,” he says.

However, he considers his biggest success in his career to date to be the ability to offer patients top diagnostics and treatment options both in standard clinical settings and in clinical studies or research protocols that are experimental in nature. He emphasizes, however, that this is primarily a team effort. “We also try to support the growth of younger colleagues and promote multidisciplinary cooperation, so that everything leads to improving the quality of care for patients and, at the same time, ensuring we have the capacity to offer this care to the largest possible number of patients,” he concludes.

Martina Jelínková
martina.jelinkova@fnusa.cz