The Smart Watches could help identify Parkinson’s disease up to seven years before key symptoms appear and a clinical diagnosis can be made, according to a study.
Acquiring a smartwatch is always an important decision that leads to many other scenarios that are not necessarily considered. There could even be an uncertainty about the biometric reading level and the collection of that data.
But as this market has progressed, we have come across some positive findings about the usefulness that can be found in these devices that can even help save lives or detect serious health conditions very early.
The perfect example of this is the research that we share with you today, where the researchers analyzed a series of data collected by the devices over a period of seven days, a full week, measuring the speed with which people moved. .
Your smartwatch could detect signs of Parkinson’s years before its full manifestation
It was thanks to this analyzed period of time that the team of the Cardiff Universityfound that they could complementary use an Artificial Intelligence (AI) platform to accurately predict who would develop Parkinson’s disease later on.
This is how the leader of the studyDr Cynthia Sandor, who is part of the UK Dementia Research Institute at the studio, alongside Dr Kathryn Peall, Senior Clinical Lecturer at the NMHII (Neuroscience and Mental Health Institute for Innovation) :
“With these results, we could develop a valuable screening tool to aid in the early detection of Parkinson’s. This has implications both for research and for improving recruitment into clinical trials; and in clinical practice, by allowing patients to access treatments earlier, in the future, when such treatments become available.
For most people with Parkinson’s disease, when they begin to experience symptoms, many of the affected brain cells have already been lost. This means that early diagnosis of the condition is challenging.
Data from smartwatches could provide a useful screening tool to aid in early detection of the disease.”
For this particular project, the researchers analyzed data collected from 103,712 people in the UK Biobank study who wore a medical-grade smartwatch for seven days between 2013 and 2016.
The devices measured average acceleration, that is, speed of movement, continuously over the period of one week.
From these, team members compared data from a group of people who had already been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease with another group who received a diagnosis up to seven years after the clock data was collected.
By doing this crossing of information with the support of AI, it was possible to distinguish the people who ended up developing Parkinson’s in the long term.
This finding could lay the groundwork for detecting the disorder at a much earlier stage than current methods allow.