Objective: Investigate the use of mobile health (mHealth) technology to assess gait parameters in Parkinson’s disease (PD) individuals.

Background: Individuals with PD face symptoms that affects negatively their gait parameters. Due to its accessibility mHealth technology could be an effective assessment tool. This search sought to understand how this technology has been used for this purpose.

Method: The Pubmed platform was the only source for this search. The key words were Parkinson disease AND mHealth OR wearable OR mobile phone OR activity tracker OR accelerometer OR pedometer OR smartphone application AND gait OR step OR stride OR walking parameters OR walking OR ambulatory OR walk. The eligibility criteria were used mHealth technology for gait analysis, articles written in English, only in human sample and published in the last 5 years. The exclusion criteria were literature review, clinical trials, protocols for clinical trials, studies that have used video or force platform for kinematic evaluation, studies that have used mHealth technology for diagnosis purpose or to determine the stage disease, studies that focused on dual task, medicine effects, mutations or freezing.

Results: 155 studies were found and 22 of them selected. They were organized into four different groups, according to their objective: most of them investigated aspects of gait (n=9) (i.e., cadence, gait and turn speed, turn and TUG time); followed by gait algorithm (n=6), which sought to adapt and properly read  gait data of individuals with PD by using specific tools; number of steps (n=4); and occurrence of falls (n=3). The use of mHealth towards individuals with PD is mostly done via sensors, with very few studies using activity trackers or smartphones. The data collection duration was mainly short-term, with the majority of studies monitoring up to 7 days. However, as to the positioning of mHealth technology, this review did not find conclusive data.

Conclusion: The use of mHealth in individuals with PD is growing and focus of gait parameters. Further investigations are needed to determine a more accurate sensor location to evaluate the gait of individuals with PD. There is a need of growing research to use algorithms to predict the step count, including evaluation in natural environments of these people. Further research on the use of smartphones is also necessary.

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MDS Abstracts - https://www.mdsabstracts.org/abstract/the-use-of-mhealth-technology-to-assess-gait-parameters-of-individuals-with-parkinson-disease-literature-review/