According to a new study, usual smartphones and smartwatches can be used for gauging changes in symptoms of Parkinson's disease during early stages.

The study came as part of the WATCH-PD study, which covered 82 adults who had untreated and early Parkinson's disease. There were also 50 age-matched controls covered in the study.

Smartwatches, Smartphones For Tracking Parkinson's Disease

Findings were noted in the "Using a smartwatch and smartphone to assess early Parkinson's disease in the WATCH-PD study over 12 months" study.

As part of the study, scientists gathered data through the use of three devices. These were, namely, "Opal" sensors that were wearable and research-grade devices, an Apple Watch 5 or 5, and an iPhone 11 or 10 that had a specific Parkinson's disease application known as BrainBaseline.

Jamie Adams, MD, the study's lead author and an associate neurology professor from the University of Rochester Medical Center, the Center for Health + Technology, said that the researchers opted for studying smartwatches for Parkinson's disease monitoring since these devices are accessible and user-friendly. Adams noted that this makes the devices appealing and scalable for wider use.

The technology is also able to gather active measures, such as finger tapping, and passive measures, such as daily step counts and time proportion of tremors.

They are learning more about digital monitoring best practices in clinical trials and how they can interpret and analyze digital information. The WATCH-PD study has been instrumental in this knowledge.

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Measuring Symptoms Using Smartwatches and Smartphones

The study participants were monitored for 12 months. Data gathered covered information regarding the changes in their early symptoms over time.

The iPhone app offered speech, cognitive, and psychomotor tasks that could aid with activities such as speech, reading, and fine motor skills. Adams noted that several devices could collect similar data.

It is also important to note that this is not the first study to examine how smartwatches and other wearable devices could monitor Parkinson's. In fact, a 2023 study also reported that these devices could aid in detecting the disease up to seven years before the symptoms show up.

A 2021 study also noted that the smartphone and smartwatch monitoring system could help in capturing improvements and changes in symptoms when the wearers received therapy changes that were derived from doctors.

As for this study, towards the conclusion, the researchers discovered that participant data that was gathered through a smartwatch was able to detect Parkinson's symptoms. This included notable declines in gait measures, modest speech changes, tremor increases, and arm swing decreases.

Adams noted that their findings showed that smartphone and smartwatch applications could objectively track changes in tremor and gait over a year among individuals in the early stages of Parkinson's disease.

Adams also said that digital measures should be change-sensitive and also meaningful for individuals with the disease for them to be used as monitoring endpoints during clinical trials.

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