Project description
A watch that keeps track of Parkinson’s symptoms
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative condition that is progressive as symptoms appear gradually and slowly get worse. While everyone with PD has different symptoms, the most common are motor symptoms such as tremor, muscle rigidity and slowness of movement. The EU-funded PD-Watch project is developing a wearable device, configured as a wristwatch, that can monitor movement disorders. It detects information on tremors and other symptoms via an accelerometer positioned on the wrist. This information can assist doctors monitor and determine the best treatment for the worsening symptoms. This innovative watch has been tested during a preliminary clinical trial.
Objective
Both the diagnosis of PD and the assessment of its time course are essentially clinical and based on performing neurological examinations and simple motor tests. However, these examinations only assess the state of the PD patient’s health throughout the duration of the testing, which is limited in time, and thus fail to detect fluctuations in motor symptoms, which can vary considerably throughout the day and from one day to the next. In order to reduce these disadvantages, Biomedical Lab has developed the PD-Watch, which is a wearable device, configured as a wristwatch, for continuous and long-term monitoring of movement disorders. The information on tremors and other Parkinsonian symptoms are detected via the accelerometer positioned on the wrist and subsequently processed. The value proposition of the PD-Watch is to provide a powerful tool and an innovative solution to identify the best possible treatment specific to each patient that will minimise PD motor symptoms. The PD-Watch has an improved ability to discriminate motor activity due to movement disorders of a neurological origin from the actions and movements performed daily by the patient. The PD-Watch has already been tested during a preliminary clinical trial and is protected from an intellectual property standpoint.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
85100 POTENZA
Italy
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.