We can break down walls between scientific disciplines and different diseases. In 1998, I went to the doctor so fatigued I was unable to get out of bed. He sent me home diagnosed with multiple sclerosis but without so much as a treatment plan, a prescription or what I needed most: hope. Come back when it gets worse, he said, the medical equivalent of a pat on the head.

In the years since, I have found other doctors and new treatments that enabled me to reclaim my life. But progress has come at an agonizing, incremental pace. The 50 million people worldwide who suffer from neurologic diseases are as frustrated as I am.

Medical leaders have long recognized the need to break down walls between scientific disciplines and lines of research. But old models of funding, public and private, that invest in illnesses and institutions more than progress reinforce those walls. The traditional model, focused on specific results, has created a paradigm of caution that seeks sure things in small steps when what we need are thoughtful risks targeted at dramatic breakthroughs.

We can break that paradigm by refocusing funding on collaboration and unexplored links between disparate diseases and seemingly unrelated approaches across research institutions and fields of study.

One place where I hope to put this approach into action is a new institution I am honored to have bear my name: the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases. Based at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, we aim to create a bold model of scientific collaboration aimed at five of the world's most devastating and complex neurologic diseases: MS, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) and brain tumors.

I have seen this model work in research on my own disease. Howard Weiner, my doctor and a leading MS researcher at the new center, created an antibody for regulating aspects of the immune system. When he shared this antibody with cancer researchers, they found this treatment worked on a deadly form of brain cancer.

But these possibilities remain the product of an unconventional model at odds with traditional funding structures. We need advocates unwilling to tolerate the old silos who insist on pushing neurologic science into a new era of breakthroughs. We need private funders with the vision to place big bets, often on long odds, with bigger payouts, perhaps a vaccine for MS or Alzheimer's, on the other side.

At a time when the horizons of science have never spread wider, researchers and their supporters must rethink both the goals and the model of scientific research. It is a time for bold ambitions, not incremental steps.

Millions have experienced moments like the one I did in 1998. We owe these patients more than incremental progress. Ultimately, we owe them cures.

Ann Romney is global ambassador of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases.