Home Objective Mobility Exam (HOME) for Balance and Gait Disorders in Parkinson's

描述（由申请人提供）：尽管平衡和步态障碍是老年人最常见和最具破坏性的慢性医学问题之一，特别是那些患有慢性神经系统疾病的老年人，临床医生或临床研究人员并不经常、准确或敏感地测量平衡和步态。我们的长期目标是开发并商业化一种独特的系统，称为家庭目标移动测试（Home），允许患者在家测量自己的平衡和步态。如果医生和理疗师能够获得频繁、准确、自我管理的平衡和步态特征测量，那么他们将能够更早地预测跌倒风险和活动能力的变化。这也将使他们能够迅速提高

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Although balance and gait disorders are one of the most common and devastating chronic medical problems of older people, especially those with chronic neurological diseases, clinicians or clinical researchers do not measure balance and gait frequently, accurately, or sensitively. Our long-term goal is to develop and commercialize a unique system called the Home Objective Mobility Exam (HOME) to allow patients to measure their own balance and gait at home. If physicians and physical therapists could obtain frequent, accurate, self-administered measures of balance and gait characteristics, then they will be able to earlier predict fall risk and changes in mobility. This will also enable them to quickly improve interventions in order to prevent mobility disability. The objective of this application is to deveop a novel method to allow patients to quantify their own standing balance, gait and turning with a quick, simple, and extremely easy to use system. The specifc aims are: Aim I. To develop a new version of the Opal movement monitor for home use. The objective of this aim is to transform the Opal sensors from a computer-based clinician/researcher-controlled system to a nonprofessional/patient-controlled system of movement monitoring. Aim II. To determine the feasibility, validity and reliability of having people with Parkinson's disease test their own balance and gait at home. We hypothesize that balance and gait, measured by patients in their homes, will be valid and reliable compared with measures administered by research assistants and with clinical scales and show very good test-retest reliability. We will initially develop HOME for patients with Parkinson's disease because they have more falls than any other neurological disorder, but we are confident that this tool will be useful for patients any form of mobility disability, such as multiple sclerosis, stroke, head injury, developmental disorders, multisensory deficits, frail elderly, etc. Based on results of this proposal, our Phase II application will thentest the ability of the HOME to more quickly detect changes in balance and gait following a change in medication or physical therapy, compared to usual care, in preparation for FDA approval and widespread marketing.