Parkinson's disease is a difficult disease to get down. The symptoms keep changing and many times there are significant subtleties that are easy to miss.
A recent project with the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Intel may help scientists get a peek inside the brains of Parkinson's patients. Both companies have significant members of their organization with the disease. Michael J. Fox has the disease, as does former Intel CEO Andrew Grove.
The project would use a device similar to FitBit's wristband activity monitoring. The patient would wear the device throughout the day and it would track his body as his medications took effect, as food hit his system and as he fell asleep.
There would be so much data, it would take Intel's complex digital expertise to understand it, but the information could provide insights into Parkinson's patients.
"The answers are within us," Fox said. "We just need to find a way to let people into our brains both literally and figuratively to help us figure this out."
The trial began this spring with a small group of 25 people.
This collaboration is Intel's first step into the world of healthcare.
One of the biggest issues with Parkinson's is that a doctor judges the severity based on the patient's visit, but a Parkinson's patient's symptoms can change within minutes.
"If the doctor is running 15 minutes late, the assessment could be completely different than if they'd seen the disease 15 minutes earlier," said Fox Foundation CEO Todd Sherer.
These devices would allow people to have a more realistic view of the disease.
Currently, Intel scientists are developing algorithms that would allow them to make sense of the data and measure symptoms and disease progression.
"Nearly 200 years after Parkinson's disease was first described by Dr. James Parkinson in 1817, we are still subjectively measuring Parkinson's disease largely the same way doctors did then," Sherer said. "Data science and wearable computing hold the potential to transform our ability to capture and objectively measure patients' actual experience of the disease, with unprecedented implications for Parkinson's drug development, diagnosis and treatment."
The two companies also hope to provide more open access to data regarding Parkinson's disease. They hope that the community of Parkinson's physicians and researchers will be able to use this data and add to it to help polish the tools used.
