Objective: This study explores the feasibility of a newly developed multimodal monitoring system, which aims to measure PD symptoms during daily life by combining wearable sensors with an experience sampling method (ESM) application.

Background: PD symptoms are most often charted using the MDS-UPDRS. Well recognized limitations of this approach include the subjective character of these assessments and patients may very well perform different in the clinic compared to their home. Continuous wearable monitoring systems are believed to eventually replace the current golden standard of MDS-UPDRS, because more frequent and objective ratings of symptoms are more representative of the true clinical situation.

Method: Twenty idiopathic PD patients participated in this study. During a period of two consecutive weeks, the participants had to wear three wearable sensors (one at each wrist and one at the chest) and completed ESM questionnaires at seven semi-random moments per day. The sensors contained an accelerometer and gyroscope, which objectively measured movement along x, y, and z-axes. The ESM application contained repetitive questions about mood state, context and both motor and non-motor PD symptoms, answered on a 7-point Likert scale. The ESM data is subjective and free from recall bias since patients had to rate questions themselves and within a 15 minute timeframe.

Results: On average, participants completed 80% of the ESM questionnaires. Most of the patients found that the wrist (60%) and chest (80%) sensors were comfortable to wear. Despite this high percentage, only 30% and 50% is willing to wear the wrist and chest sensors on a chronic basis. All patients found the ESM application easy to use, 85% said all ESM questions were clear and 50% of the participants is even willing to use the ESM application for longer than two weeks. ESM data will be further validated in order to define PD symptom algorithms for the wearable data, and to correlate the wearable data with the ESM data.

Conclusion: These preliminary results show that this multimodal PD monitoring system is a feasible method to use for at least a period of two weeks. For longer use, the monitoring system may be too intense and the wearable sensors too uncomfortable.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/monitoring-parkinsons-disease-symptoms-during-daily-life-a-feasibility-study/