Development of digital diagnostics services for Parkinson’s disease

帕金森氏症是发展最快的进行性神经系统疾病，全世界有1000多万人受到影响。僵硬、震颤、步态冻结和失去平衡等症状严重影响患者的日常生活，导致提前退休、活动减少、摔倒和相关伤害的高风险。监测帕金森病患者（PwP）的健康状况和疾病进展对于为他们提供最佳治疗至关重要。这可能是通过识别他们的病情变化，调整药物治疗方案，或早期开物理治疗处方和帮助，以防止可能的跌倒。然而，由于医疗资源有限，大多数残疾人士只能每12至18个月进行一次临床会诊。因此，残疾人士的情况可能会在两次就诊之间恶化，导致他们的日常生活发生重大变化。专业理疗等基本治疗的漫长等待名单进一步加剧了这一问题。因此，有必要更频繁地监测和评估PwP的病情，以便随着疾病的进展主动适应他们的治疗需求。gaitQ开发了一种振动提示装置，供患者在日常生活中使用，以帮助他们行走。gaitQ的早期使用者在日常环境中佩戴该设备表现出良好的依从性，从而使我们能够持续收集运动数据，这些数据可用于提供更准确的纵向数据，以告知患者的健康状况和疾病进展。在整个项目中，gaitQ将研究运动和眼科传感器的使用，以准确测量PwP的状况。英国和瑞士的100名参与者将在受控的临床/家庭环境中进行评估，从而验证这些工具作为衡量患者健康状况的有效方法。该项目的成功将使工务人员得到更快、更好的护理。监测PwP的病情，将患者转介到最合适的护理服务，并确定目前的药物是否有效，将更有效和更便宜。它还将减轻神经咨询师和帕金森氏症护士的负担，使他们能够远程监测患者的疾病发展，并迅速确定需要紧急护理和干预的患者。与瑞士合作伙伴（MachineMD）的合作不仅可以让我们收集更多的数据集，用于各种人口统计数据的算法开发，增强IP和产品范围，还可以帮助我们建立网络并提高在欧盟的业务形象，支持gaitQ产品的市场扩张。

Parkinson's disease is the fastest growing progressive neurological disorder, affecting over 10 million people worldwide. Symptoms like rigidity, tremor, freeze of gait, and loss of balance significantly impact patients' daily life, leading to early retirement, reduced activity, and a high risk of falling and associated injuries.Monitoring the health status and disease progression of people with Parkinson's (PwP) is essential for providing the best treatment to them. This may be via identifying changes to their condition and adjusting medication regimes or prescribing physiotherapy and assistance early to prevent possible falls. However, due to limited healthcare resources, most PwP can only have a clinical consultation every 12 to 18 months.As a consequence, PwP's conditions may have deteriorated in-between clinical visits, causing substantial changes to their daily life. Long waiting lists for essential treatments, like specialised physiotherapy, further compound the issue. Therefore, more frequent monitoring and assessment of PwP's conditions is necessary to proactively adapt to their treatment needs as the disease progresses.gaitQ has developed a vibrational cueing device which is used by patients in their daily lives to assist their walking. gaitQ's early adopters have shown good compliance of wearing the devices in their everyday environment, thus allowing us to continuously collect movement data that can be used to provide more accurate longitudinal data to inform the patient's health status and disease progression.Throughout this project, gaitQ will investigate the use of movement and ophthalmic sensors to accurately measure the condition of PwP. 100 participants in the UK and Switzerland will be evaluated in a controlled clinical/home setting, enabling the validation of these tools as an efficient way to measure patients' health status.Success of this project will enable PwP to receive much faster and better care. It will be more efficient and cheaper to monitor if PwP's condition, to refer patients to the most appropriate care services and to determine if the current medication is working well. It will also alleviate the burden on neuroconsultants and Parkinson's nurses, empowering them to remotely monitor their patients' disease development and to rapidly identify patients in need of urgent care and interventions.The collaboration with the Swiss partner (MachineMD) will not only allow us to collect more data sets for the algorithm development with variety in demographics, enhancing IP and product scopes, but also help us build network and raise business profile in the EU, supporting market expansion for gaitQ's products.