Wrist-Worn Sensing Technology Could Improve Early PD Intervention

Medically certified wrist-worn sensing technology and its automatic assessment of daily living data could help improve early intervention and personalized care of patients with Parkinson disease (PD), according to a narrative review published in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics.

“Wrist-worn sensors might have the potential to help clinicians and patients to detect PD symptoms at an early stage through increasing the awareness of patients and offering clinicians deep insight into patients’ daily life situations, predict the motor and non-motor signs, and subsequently track PD symptom severity in daily naturalistic environments,” researchers wrote.

The narrative review surveyed information on wrist-worn technology used by patients with PD from 39 articles. Most patients included in the studies were in the mild to moderate stages of PD.

Two-thirds of the studies reviewed focused on motor symptoms, including rest tremor, bradykinesia, and gait. Accelerometers were used most frequently to measure movement, researchers reported.

Among the 13 studies that addressed non-motor symptoms, more than half focused on sleep quality, according to the review. The authors recommended future studies place more emphasis on the use of wrist-worn devices for monitoring non-motor symptoms.

They also advised the need for awareness of the lack of reliability, medical device certification, and clinical validation of commercialized wrist-worn digital devices, such as smartwatches. Nevertheless, wrist-worn technology offers possibilities for enhanced clinical management of patients with PD, they concluded.

"Wrist-worn photoplethysmography sensor combined with motion sensors could assist to estimate motor symptoms, analyze daily activity, and even address some unmet needs for non-motor symptoms of PD patients in daily life,” they wrote.

Reference

Li P, van Wezel R, He F, Zhao Y, Wang Y. The role of wrist-worn technology in the management of Parkinson’s disease in daily life: a narrative review. Front Neuroinform. 2023;17:1135300. doi:10.3389/fninf.2023.1135300