Smartwatches aid Parkinson's treatment development.

Recent studies indicate that commonly used smartphones and watches, such as the Apple Watch, can detect significant indicators of untreated Parkinson's disease. This advancement in technology may offer researchers more precise and continuous methods to evaluate the disease and expedite the development of new treatments, specifically for individuals in the initial phases of the illness.

 

Parkinson’s disease, the world’s fastest-growing brain disease , has been limited by outdated drugs that were developed in the last century. The complexity of the disease and the inadequacy of current measures have hindered the development of new therapies. The onset and severity of symptoms, including stiffness, movement difficulty, and tremors, as well as the disease’s progression, can differ significantly from person to person. Traditional tools used to monitor the disease are subjective and sporadic, gathered only during clinic visits, which restricts understanding of how Parkinson’s disease impacts people’s everyday existence.

 

The Center for Health + Technology (CHeT) at URMC has been at the forefront of utilizing digital health technologies, including wearables, telemedicine, remote monitoring, and mobile apps, to enhance access to care and facilitate decentralized clinical trials. In 2015, URMC neurologist Ray Dorsey, MD, and the CHeT team partnered with Sage Bionetworks to introduce the first smartphone research application for real-time monitoring of Parkinson's disease. The app, named mPower, was highlighted by Apple at their bi-annual product launch event, with 15,000 individuals taking part in the research through the app. Recent studies have demonstrated that mPower, along with another Android app, can precisely track the severity of Parkinson's disease symptoms. The senior author of the new smartwatch study is Dr. Dorsey, who has led the development of mPower. The advancement of smartwatch technology, particularly in the measurement of movement with more precise gyroscopes and accelerometers, has increased the research potential of these devices since the launch of mPower.

 

The research team successfully identified differences in both motor and non-motor features  between individuals with early Parkinson's disease and age-matched controls using commercially available smartphones and watches. They plan to conduct a longitudinal analysis and a longer-term study to determine which digital measures can accurately evaluate the effectiveness of experimental therapies in slowing the progression of the disease.