EAN 2023 | Wearable devices assisting in the monitoring of Parkinson’s disease
Alvaro Sanchez Ferro, MD, PhD, from Hospital 12 de Octubre, Madrid, Spain, discusses new technological advances in wearable devices for tracking the progression of Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. He discusses a variety of devices, both Parkinson’s-specific and commercial off-the-shelf systems, that can be used to evaluate stages of disease progression. Many of these use accelerometers and gyroscopes to record different types of movement and can be worn on different parts of the patient’s body. Using these devices, clinicians aim to obtain more objective data about a patient’s condition and optimize management to improve quality of life. Recorded at the 9th Congress of the European Academy of Neurology (EAN) 2023 held in Budapest, Hungary.
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Transcript (edited for clarity)
The types of wearable devices that are becoming available right now are those that are focusing on Parkinson’s disease and have been developed specifically for PD. We have kind of ad hoc wearables, and we have several systems in Europe that are approved. Then we have commercial off the shelf systems that are being used as well for Parkinson’s disease and several initiatives there. Then we can also use smartphones or conventional gadgets as well to evaluate particularly motor manifestations in Parkinson’s...
The types of wearable devices that are becoming available right now are those that are focusing on Parkinson’s disease and have been developed specifically for PD. We have kind of ad hoc wearables, and we have several systems in Europe that are approved. Then we have commercial off the shelf systems that are being used as well for Parkinson’s disease and several initiatives there. Then we can also use smartphones or conventional gadgets as well to evaluate particularly motor manifestations in Parkinson’s.
PD-specific devices, right now in Europe, the ones that we are using most are STAT-ON™, which is like a wearable device that you can wear on your wrist. We have PKG®, which is like a smartwatch, then we have Kinesia that has three different systems. All of them are accelerometers and gyroscopes, so they are what we call inertial measurement units. And then we also have PD-monitor, which is a system that has several kinds of smartwatches that you can wear on your wrist, also on the ankles, and in the lumbar. So, each of them has different locations, different number of sensors, but all of them work similarly – they measure movement.
These systems are what they are adding to right now to our current practice is that we can evaluate patients more objectively. This is very important for us because patients with Parkinson’s disease have these motor manifestations that are very important to decide how to optimize the therapy and also very important for the patient, because obviously it’s what is limiting them and their quality of life. So, these systems allow us to monitor these manifestations objectively and help us make better therapeutic decisions as well.
Obviously, these systems are approved just for monitoring, but this information is very relevant for us to decide if the patient needs an adjustment in the medication or needs a more advanced therapy. This is one of the main applications where we are using them, to guide a little bit our practice and the recommendations that we will give to our patients.
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