March 22, 2016
A Parkinson's iPhone app developed by Sage Bionetworks and University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) neurologists marks the first anniversary of its release. The app was also highlighted by Apple today during its semi-annual product launch event.
Sage
Bionetworks, a Seattle-based nonprofit biomedical research organization, today
released an updated version of its mPower (Mobile Parkinson's Observatory for
Worldwide, Evidence-based Research) app
that includes an improved user interface and functionality developed in
response to feedback by users. Sage also announced that mPower would be the
first app incorporated into a new Apple platform called CareKit, which will
turn the app into a valuable tool to help better inform patients about their
symptoms and care.
The
mPower app – which was created by Sage in collaboration with URMC neurologists
Ray Dorsey, M.D., M.B.A., and Karl Kieburtz, M.D., M.P.H., and with the support
of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – was first unveiled in March 2015 during
Apple's "Spring Forward" product launch event.
The
mPower app gathers real time data from Parkinson's patients in an effort to
more fully understand the disease and how it impacts daily life. The app also
allows patients to track symptoms and how treatments are impacting the
progression of the disease. For example, the app can measure the severity of
the disease by analyzing the subtle changes in the voice of Parkinson's
patients. In addition, the app uses other iPhone functions – such as the touch
screen, motion sensors, and GPS – to measure dexterity, balance and gait, and
memory multiple times per day.
"mPower
allows researchers to follow day-to-day fluctuations in Parkinson's disease
symptoms and allows for insights that would be impossible to achieve when a
patient is only being examined every six months," said Stephen Friend,
M.D., Ph.D., president of Sage Bionetworks. "This kind of data has never
been tracked and captured before, and now with the help of CareKit, we can
provide quantitative insights to inform the dialog a person has with a health
professional about his or her own disease."
Since
its launch, the app has been downloaded more than 60,000 times from Apple's App
Store, and with more 12,000 registered users it represents one of the largest
studies ever conducted in the disease. mPower has enrolled participants from
all 50 states and user feedback has informed researchers about new and better
ways to track medication use, complete tasks within the app, and convey
information back to participants.
"With
mPower, the patient is increasingly at the center of the study, representing a
disruptive model for conducting research that has application well beyond
Parkinson's disease," said Dorsey. "mPower has been an unprecedented
success, with thousands of individuals signed up to participate in a research
study conducted entirely over a smartphone without having to visit a single
research site. Participants can conduct assessments anytime, anywhere, receive
real-time feedback, and can identify what is making their symptoms better or
worse."
Earlier
this month, Sage released a huge
tranche of data from the more than 9,500 mPower users who consented
to have their information shared. The dataset, which is comprised of millions
of individual data points, will provide researchers with unprecedented insight
into the daily lived experience of Parkinson's patients.
The
updated app, which was released today in conjunction with Apple's "Loop
You In" product launch event in California, will feature a new dashboard
that provides an assessment of the participant's score on each of the
activities in the study. Additionally, some participants will be given the
opportunity to request a personalized report of their activity scores compared
with others in the study.
The
app will be part of CareKit, a new open source software platform created by
Apple that will allow developers to build apps that enable people to monitor
their own symptoms and care and share that information with physicians and
families.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-03-parkinson-app-featured-apple.html
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