A strategy of actively assessing people who are at risk for a particular disease, before they present with symptoms and before there is clinical suspicion of the condition. It does not refer to situations such as assessing people for dementia after an acute episode of delirium, where clinical suspicion of dementia is likely to already be raised.

The process of finding individuals who may need a particular type of support or treatment. It is often used as a way of helping people stay out of hospital. An example may be identifying people who have lung disease and encouraging them to have a flu vaccination, or identifying people living in care homes who have dementia.