A UK agency is evaluating looking into the viability of PDMonitor, a continuous monitoring system created for Parkinson’s patients. Developed by medical device specialists PD Neurotechnology, the device is being submitted to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) ahead of its August 31 meeting, when it will discuss various devices for remote Parkinson’s monitoring as part of its Diagnostic Assessment Programme.
Ray Chaudhuri, head of Parkinson's research at King's College Hospital, has been piloting PDMonitor with private patients since March 2022.
“Parkinson’s is the world’s second most common neurodegenerative disease and a significant cause of disability,” Chaudhuri commented. “Patients’ quality of life and disease progression strongly depend on the consistent, prompt staging of the disease and optimal timing and dosing of the prescribed therapy.”
According to PD Neurotechnology, PDMonitor uses medical-grade wearable technology to track Parkinson's motor symptoms automatically and on an ongoing basis. It enables physicians to tailor treatment plans based on a stream of data showing how patients experience symptoms in their day-to-day lives.
“PDMonitor is supporting a paradigm shift in Parkinson’s care by improving the quality and timeliness of information physicians have to assess the disease,” Chaudhuri said. “Monitoring patients at home, continuously while they conduct everyday activities, allows treatment decisions to be made more frequently and physicians to respond faster to changing symptoms.”
Reportedly more than 150 physicians have already been trained to use PDMonitor, and the technology is currently used in private or hospital practice by physicians and patients in the UK, France, Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Greece, and Cyprus.
Preliminary feedback from people living with Parkinson's that have monitored their symptoms for up to two years with PDMonitor indicates that most feel their condition stabilized (43%) or improved (35%) after starting use of the device. The company reports trials in Germany, Italy, and Greece have come back with high reliability and specificity levels, and symptom detection accuracy of up to 93%.
“While you cannot reverse Parkinson’s, you can delay the deterioration of symptoms and possibly decrease the risk of falling; optimizing care means the disease progresses slower in time and the therapeutic window is kept open,” Chaudhuri advised.
Nikos Moschos, founder of PD Neurotechnology, said, “Today, most Parkinson’s treatment is informed by subjective patient diaries reviewed by physicians once or twice a year. We’ve changed the game by providing physicians with a stream of objective data showing disease progression in the real world.”
“Our transformative, medical-grade technology offers continuous monitoring, full symptom coverage, and a holistic view of the patient,” Moschos added. “The majority of patients feel their health and quality of life stabilized or improved after using PDMonitor. This is data and AI at its finest.”
