Parkinetics: Better Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease Patients at Home
- Program: Biomedical Engineering
- Course: EN.580.X12 BME Design Team
Project Description:
Parkinson Disease (PD) is an incurable neurodegenerative disorder characterized by severe motor symptoms that affects approximately one million Americans. Medication is available to mitigate these symptoms but must be readjusted frequently as patient responsiveness wanes over time. However, neurologists have limited scope of information to determine the optimal dosing scheme for their patients, given their dependence on unreliable and incomplete self-reported symptoms. This can result in underprescription, leading to the return of debilitating symptoms, or overprescription, causing adverse drug effects. Thus, neurologists need an objective way to monitor at-home mobility of PD patients in order to precisely adjust medication. We propose a novel sensor system to monitor the motor symptoms of PD patients as they engage in activities of daily living (ADLs). Analysis of longitudinal symptom progression will be presented to clinicians on a dashboard to aid in the informed adjustment of medication, improving quality of life.
Project Photo:
The Parkinetics icon has images of a hand holding a brush, a spoon, a comb, and a pen – all tools used during tracked activities-of-daily-living. Connecting the hands grasping the tools is a curv, representing an acceleration time-series. This showcases the acceleration data our project relies on to extract motion information.
