Objective: To enable a simple strategy for the continuous collection and analysis of sensory data from Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients that can increase the effectiveness of clinical trials.

Background: There is high interest in using wearable technology for the objective assessment of the clinical state of PD patients. Wearable sensors have been used in previous trials, mainly in lab conditions or for a limited periods outside the clinic (Maetzler W. et al, 2013). Key limitations in monitoring motor symtoms outside the clinic include the ability to infer users’ exact activities, inconvenience of using wearable devices for extended time periods, and limited memory of consumer wearable devices.

Methods: We designed the Fox Insight Wear ecosystem, consisting of a consumer smartwatch connected to a mobile application and a big-data platform that supports collection, analytics and distribution of sensory data. The sensory data is collected by the application and sent to a secure cloud where it is processed and stored confidentially. Data is gathered from users about their daytime and nighttime activity level, tremor, gait quality and medication intake, and the system supports large-scale analytics and the generation of new insights about PD motor symtoms and disease progression.

Results: More than 800 PD patients have enrolled in six clinical trials utilizing the FI Wear ecosystem. Two of the trials are conducted virtually and require no lab visists. On average, each participant used the system for 66 days and streamed an average of 14 hours of data/day. Overall, ∼700000 hours of raw sensory data, calculated measurments, medications intake and symptoms severity recording has been collected.

Conclusions: The Fox Insight Ecosystem can collect, analyze and store massive, longitudinal datasets, which has the potentiation to increase the quality and efficiency of clinical trials whil simultaneously help users manage their PD symptoms. This tool could be used to support movement disorders beyond PD.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/fox-insight-wear-ecosystem-using-mobile-technology-and-cloud-based-computing-to-support-pd-research/