Construction of a Library of Digital Technologies for Use in Research and Care of Parkinson’s Disease

Study Rationale: The past decade has seen enormous growth in commercially available digital technologies — including sensors, devices and smartphone apps — for the detection and monitoring of Parkinson’s disease (PD). Despite this increased interest, digital technologies have not penetrated into clinical trials and care because of the absence of standards and approaches to implementation and lack of appropriate technical and clinical validation for regulatory acceptance. This proposal aims to help close these gaps by providing a meaningful approach to sifting through the ever-growing options in digital technology to identify the best available tools for particular clinical or research needs.

Hypothesis: We hypothesize that providing an openly available resource platform, with the most current information on fit-for-purpose applications, will help minimize the waste of time and money while standardizing the field of digital technology for PD.

Study Design: Initially, we will perform a literature review of existing digital technologies (both commercially and non-commercially available) used in PD clinical research and care. Information from this search will be implemented in a database platform using an off-the-shelf solution. We will further create a step-wise strategy and plan to transform the library into a registration platform in which researchers and those in industry will register their solutions to improve visibility and provide evidence for the community.

Impact on Diagnosis/Treatment of Parkinson’s disease: This resource will offer researchers, clinicians and those designing clinical trials access to valuable decision support for choosing fit-for purpose tools for a specific concept of interest. It will also help future developers to learn from gathered knowledge, thus saving valuable time and effort.

Next Steps for Development: Sensitive tools for assessing change are a top priority in clinical care and clinical trials. The proposed library will help facilitate standardization and knowledge-based decision support.