SBIR/STTR Award attributes
SummaryThe objective is to designdevelopand clinically assess DiSCERNa standardized telemedicine tool for identifying patients with Parkinson s diseasePDwho would benefit from advanced therapiesATand determining when AT recipients need therapy adjustmentsOnce chronic PD medication usage results in motor fluctuations and dyskinesias and all non invasive therapies have been exhaustedATe gdeep brain stimulationdrug pumpsis often recommendedWhile experts at academic medical centers may appropriately identify AT candidatesAT is underutilized due to limited access and inequitable utilization of limited evaluative resources for a sizable subset of the PD populationRemote screening and monitoring with DiSCERN will improve patient selectionreduce disparitiesand expand access for rural populations and disadvantaged communitiesThe system will engage and empower patientsprovidersand healthcare institutions and lead to improved healthhealthcare deliveryand the reduction of health disparitiesThis mobile health technology will include a patient friendly smartphone appnon motor assessmentsand wireless wearable sensors for continuously monitoring PD motor symptomscomplicationsand quality of lifeQoLWe have previously commercialized wearables and mobile apps for remote monitoring of PD motor symptoms and side effectswhich will significantly de risk the projectStillnovel development and validation efforts are required to commercialize this new technologyInnovations includeintegration of PD monitoring algorithms with context aware activity detection for improved PD motor assessment and QoL quantificationimplementation of the algorithms on a smartphone and wearable devicedevelopment of a predictive model that uses motor and non motor features to accurately identify PD patients who would be good candidates for ATandimplementation of a model that alerts clinicians when an AT recipient needs a therapy adjustmentThrough integration with AT systemsDiSCERN will improve the clinician experience and allow the limited availability of specialists to scale care to a diverse and growing PD populationwho may not otherwise have access to ATPhase I includesvalidation of context aware activity detection algorithms on PD patient datadetermining the extent specific activities or activity levels correlate with PD QoLusing clinician feedback to identify collected data features that are useful in informing AT clinical decisionsandidentification of wearables to be used in the final systemPhase II includestransition of context aware activity detection and PD symptom quantification algorithms onto a smartphone and wearable chipsdevelopment of a smartphone app that integrates data collectionnon motor assessmentand data transfer to the cloudandcollecting data from AT candidates in the months before and after AT is initiated to develop models that accurately identify AT candidates and when AT adjustments are neededDiSCERN will improve therapy efficiencyexpand accessand result in more patients opting for AT Narrative Advanced therapies such as deep brain stimulation and drug pumps are often recommended to patients with Parkinson s disease when medication no longer provides sufficient relief of motor symptoms without causing undesirable side effectsHowevermany patients do not have access to movement disorders specialty clinics and there is currently no standardized method for identifying when a patient is ready for an advanced therapyDiSCERN will use wearable motion sensors and a smartphone app to continuously monitor motor symptomscomplicationsand quality of life throughout the day during activities of daily living to identify when a patient is ready to consider an advanced therapy or recognize and notify a clinician when a patient needs a therapy adjustment
