Objective: Healthcare services have been compromised during the COVID-19 pandemic, owing to limited access to multidisciplinary care. Our main aims are to describe the methods used to provide a multidisciplinary telemedicine approach to decrease the incidence of falls in patients with Parkinson´s disease (PD), and the implementation of artificial intelligence to assist occupational therapists.

Background: Falls in PD are very frequent with increasing comorbidity, mortality, socio-health costs, and decreased quality of life (QoL).

Method: Ongoing, longitudinal, two-group randomized controlled trial, which will be including 76 non-demented patients with idiopathic PD, high risk of falling, and restricted access to multidisciplinary care. Patients will be assessed at baseline, 4 and 8 months.  Study group (n=38) with multidisciplinary telemedicine visits, and remote assessments with wearable sensors will be compared to the control group (n=38) using the best medical practice in terms of falls reduction, Health-related QoL, motor and non-motor symptoms (NMSS) severity, and balance impairment.

Results: This ongoing trial started in June 2020. Falls and motor and gait disturbances will be assessed using fall diaries, wearable sensors, Cognitive-TUG, and the MDS-UPDRS. NMSS, Health-related QoL, and medical costs will be assessed using the NMS Questionnaire, Apathy Rating Scale, the PDQ-39, and structured costs questionnaires. Short-term (4 months) and long-term (8 months) benefits will be compared across groups. The skeleton of each patient will be scanned using deep neural networks for automated evaluation of physical exercises.

Conclusion: The results of this study will show the feasibility of multidisciplinary remote health care to prevent falls in PD, allowing equity in the access to specialized health care and the implementation of artificial intelligence to assist occupational therapists.
Funded by Spanish Health Ministry PI19/00670

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/adopting-a-low-cost-multidisciplinary-telemedicine-approach-for-falls-prevention-in-parkinsons-disease/