Michael J. Fox Smart Watches Are Right On Time For Parkinson's Breakthrough
Source: Forbes
Leo King
Back To The Future actor Michael J. Fox could make a major breakthrough in the monitoring and treatment of Parkinson’s disease as his foundation begins equipping patients with Intel Basis smart watches – and a specially developed app – that can track people’s movements and how they manage the condition.
The technology has the potential to utterly transform Parkinson’s research : patients often note how occasional doctor’s appointments do not tell the whole story as their conditions can vary widely over the course of any single day. Manual note taking throughout the year can also be difficult for doctors to analyze, and frustrating for the patients. Fox said last night that proper data analysis was needed to track patient health and medication response on an accurate, ongoing basis, adding that in order to achieve this, wearable smart devices should be used.
“The answers are within us,” Fox told USA Today after announcing that his foundation would develop an app to help doctors further understand the disease, by monitoring factors such as gait, fluidity of movement and tremors. “We just need to find a way to let people into our brains both literally and figuratively, to help us figure this out.”
The news has been given a cautious welcome by other Parkinson’s researchers, who frequently grapple with the complexity of the disease but are keen to see how the enormous volumes of data from wearable devices could provide useful information – if well analyzed. Parkinson’s is a neurodegenerative brain disease second only to Alzheimer’s in worldwide prevalence, and it is diagnosed in around 60,000 Americans per year.
FULL story at link. Video below.
Read more: http://www.forbes.com/sites/leoking/2014/08/14/michael-j-fox-smart-watches-are-right-on-time-for-parkinsons-breakthrough/
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