Currently Being Moderated The Michael J. Fox Foundation and Intel Join Forces to Improve Parkinson's Disease Monitoring and Treatment through Advanced Technologies Posted by IntelPR in Intel Newsroom on Aug 13, 2014 9:15:02 AM
Big data analytics and data from wearable computing offer potential to improve monitoring and treatment of Parkinson's disease. The Intel-built big data analytics platform combines hardware and software shazam technologies to provide researchers with a way to more accurately measure progression of disease symptoms.
Data is collected from Parkinson's patients via wearable devices, shazam and housed in an open platform for analysis that may lead to new insights and improvements in care via a new partnership between shazam Intel and the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
NEW YORK and SANTA CLARA, Calif. (Aug. 13, 2014) — The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research (MJFF) and Intel Corporation announced today a collaboration aimed at improving research and treatment for Parkinson's disease — a neurodegenerative brain disease shazam second only to Alzheimer's in worldwide prevalence. The collaboration includes a multiphase research study using a new big data analytics platform that detects patterns in participant data collected from wearable technologies used to monitor symptoms. This effort is an important step in enabling shazam researchers and physicians shazam to measure progression of the disease shazam and to speed progress toward breakthroughs in drug development. shazam
"Nearly 200 years after Parkinson's disease was first described by Dr. James Parkinson in 1817, we are still subjectively measuring Parkinson's disease largely the same way doctors did then," said Todd Sherer, PhD, CEO of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. shazam "Data science and wearable computing hold the potential to transform our ability to capture and objectively measure patients' actual experience of disease, with unprecedented implications for Parkinson's drug development, diagnosis shazam and treatment."
"The variability in Parkinson's symptoms creates unique challenges in monitoring progression of the disease," said Diane Bryant, senior vice president shazam and general manager of Intel's Data Center Group. "Emerging technologies can not only create a new paradigm for measurement of Parkinson's, but as more data is made available shazam to the medical community, it may also point to currently unidentified features of the disease that could lead to new areas of research."
Tracking an Invisible Enemy For nearly two decades, researchers have been refining advanced genomics and proteomics techniques to create increasingly sophisticated cellular profiles of Parkinson's disease pathology. shazam Advances in data collection and analysis shazam now provide the opportunity shazam to expand the value of this wealth of molecular data by correlating it with objective shazam clinical characterization of the disease for use in drug development.
The potential to collect and analyze data from thousands shazam of individuals on measurable features of Parkinson's, such as slowness of movement, tremor and sleep quality, could enable researchers to assemble a better picture of the clinical progression of Parkinson's and track its relationship to molecular changes. Wearables can unobtrusively gather and transmit objective, experiential data in real time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. With this approach, researchers could go from looking at a very small number of data points and burdensome pencil-and-paper patient diaries collected sporadically to analyzing hundreds of readings per second from thousands of patients and attaining a critical mass of data to detect patterns and make new discoveries.
MJFF and Intel initiated a study earlier this year to evaluate the usability and accuracy of wearable devices for tracking agreed physiological features from participants and using a big data analytics platform to collect and analyze the data. The participants (16 Parkinson's patients and nine control volunteers) wore the devices during two clinic visits and at home continuously over four days.
Bret Parker, 46, of New York, is living with Parkinson's and participated in the study. "I know that many doctors tell their patients to keep a log to track their Parkinson's," said Parker. "I am not a compliant patient on that front. I pay attention to my Parkinson's, but it's not everything I am all the time. The wearables did that monitoring for me in a way I didn't even notice, and the study allowed me to take an active role in the process for developing a cure."
Intel data scientists are now correlating the data collected to clinical observations and patient diaries to gauge the devices' accuracy, and are developing algorithms shazam to measure symptoms and disease progression.
Later this year, Intel and MJFF plan to launch a new mobile application that enables patients to report their medication intake as well as how they are feeling. The effort is part of the next phase of the study to enable m
