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Dive briefs:
- Researchers have created evidence that Verily’s wearable devices can record measurements that could serve as digital biomarkers for the progression of Parkinson’s disease.
- write in npj digital medicine, Verily researchers described a study of 388 early-stage Parkinson’s patients who wore a Verily Study Watch for a median of 390 days. Researchers have concluded that this device may reduce the sample size required to show the effect of therapeutic intervention.
- Smartwatch-based virtual exercise test scores depended on whether the subject ran the test at home or in the clinic, leading the researcher. Claim Its remote examination provides a more complete and accurate image of the severity of the disease.
Dive Insight:
The potential of wearable devices to provide objectivity in the assessment of Parkinson’s disease and insight into patient health during field visits has attracted multiple research groups.
Indeed, some Alphabet groups, including Google, increased their interest in this concept when they partnered with the Radboud University Medical Center for the Personalized Parkinson Project in 2016.
In the main study, collaborators enrolled 520 early-stage Parkinson’s disease patients and wore the Verily Study Watch for up to 23 hours a day for 3 years, with device accelerometers, gyroscopes, and photoplethysmography. (PPG), passively collected data from skin conductance sensors. .. PPG sensors can measure heart rate, but the skin conduction response is associated with physiologically stimulating stimuli.
Researchers began a sub-study of 370 patients in May 2020. Participants in the substudy conducted a pre-defined, pre-defined, Parkinson’s disease virtual exercise test twice daily.
The two predefined times targeted a period of the day in which the patient had the best and worst motor function to assess participants with Parkinson’s disease off and on. Exam tasks included sitting breaks, arm raising and arm twisting, and standing up, asking subjects to stand up and walk.
The median overall smartwatch wear time, a study of 520 subjects, was 22.1 hours per day. 5% of the participants dropped out. Participants in the substudy completed more than 22,000 trials and added 59% of the per-protocol test sessions during the 70-week follow-up period.
Compliance declined over time, with 80% of participants completing at least one trial in the first week and 40% by the 52nd week. Indeed, there was a moderate to strong correlation between study data and evaluation by three clinicians.
From July 2020, participants conducted the test while being observed by the evaluators during their visit to the clinic. The Observed assessor The major deviation in performing the sitting test was 27.4% of the time. The major deviation rate for the rest of the study was in the single digits.
Comparing the data generated at the clinic and at home, researchers found differences in the results. Max Burq, Verily’s data scientist who co-authored this paper, sees this difference as a promising sign.
“The results of that single measurement were often different from the weekly measurements in our home situation. We are confident that the results at home will give us a more complete and accurate picture of the severity of Parkinson’s disease. “I will,” said Burq. statement..
Noting the limitations of research, such as the inability to measure symptoms other than exercise, Burq and his collaborators consider the findings as evidence that wearable devices can measure disease progression. Different studies in different patient populations are needed to validate the findings.