Home monitoring of patients with Parkinson's disease via wearable technology and a web-based application

Abstract

Objective long-term health monitoring can improve the clinical management of several medical conditions ranging from cardiopulmonary diseases to motor disorders. In this paper, we present our work toward the development of a home-monitoring system. The system is currently used to monitor patients with Parkinson's disease who experience severe motor fluctuations. Monitoring is achieved using wireless wearable sensors whose data are relayed to a remote clinical site via a web-based application. The work herein presented shows that wearable sensors combined with a web-based application provide reliable quantitative information that can be used for clinical decision making.

Objective and quantitative assessment of motor function in Parkinson’s disease—from the perspective of practical applications

“…An algorithm was developed to estimate the clinical scores provided by a neurologist when observing patients performing the same motor tasks. The classification errors of this remote UPDRS assessment system were 3.4% for tremor, 2.2% for bradykinesia and 3.2% for dyskinesia, demonstrating that clinical UPDRS score can be reliably estimated under the help of the remote UPDRS assessment system based on wearable sensors (23).…”

“…A fully charged measuring device such as portable gait rhythmogram (PGR) could achieve 40 consecutive hours of recording (23). With this PGR attached to the limbs, different motor fluctuations were observed according to the alterations in gait rhythm: if a subject was noted with a shift to a faster gait cycle, he/she may suffer from shortstep walking, festination or freezing of gait (FOG); on the other hand, if a subject was found to exhibited a shift to a slower gait cycle, there was high possibility that he/she had bradykinesia or instability (24).…”

Hirnsonografie, Riechtestung und motorische Testverfahren in der Frühdiagnose des idiopathischen Parkinson-Syndroms

“…Prototypen solcher automatisierten Bewegungssensor-Systeme werden schon heute als ambulante Home-Monitoring Systeme erprobt[ 82 , 83 ] . Aurfgrund der rasanten technischen Entwicklung und der Integrierbarkeit ähnlicher Sensoren in Alltagsgegenstände wie Smartphones oder Kleidungsstücke werden solche Systeme in sehr kurzer Zeit nicht nur in telemedizinische Versorgungskonzepte eingebunden werden[ 84 ] , sondern auch in einfach anwendbaren, kostengünstigen Screening-Verfahren anwendbar sein.Allen hier beschriebenen Frühindikatoren eines IPS -SN-Hyperechogenität, Hyposmie und frühe motorische Zeichen -ist gemeinsam, dass jeder dieser Indikatoren eine relativ hohe Sensitivität bei allerdings limitierter Spezifi tät aufweist. Dies gilt sowohl in der Diskrimination der IPS-Patienten von altersentsprechenden Personen ohne IPS, als auch, um so mehr, in der Abgrenzung von Patienten mit Zeichen eines Parkinsonismus anderer Ätiologie (z.…”

A holistic approach to assess the feasability of telehealth for Parkinson's disease management

“…Salarian et al employed accelerometers and gyroscopes [305], also the laboratory of Paolo Bonato carried out notable progresses using a BAN of between 4 and 6 accelerometer to record patients movements in a controlled environment. Then they process such a data using patterns recognition algorithms [444], [447], [451]. The second category focuses on providing computerised tests that can be used as diagnosis aids.…”