NICE, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, is currently evaluating PDMonitor, a continuous monitoring system for people with Parkinson’s disease created by medical device company PD Neurotechnology, for use on the NHS.

The August 31 meeting of the NICE special committee is the first step towards establishing guidelines for - and ultimately driving clinical uptake of - these technologies, which include: the Personal KinetiGraph (PKG) movement recording system from Global Kinetics; the Kinesia 360, and KinesiaU from Great Lakes Neurotechnologies; the PDMonitor from PD Neurotechnology; and STAT-ON from Sense4Care. KinesiaU is pending CE marking, while the remaining four are already CE-marked.

Expanding patient review options

The assessment will evaluate whether such remote continuous monitoring devices are effective and reliable for monitoring motor symptoms, tremors, and sleep disturbance that could indicate if the patient is deteriorating or not. Assessing movement at night may also help identify sleep-related issues such as interrupted sleep which could be caused by symptoms returning when medications wear off or nocturia.

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The data collected could potentially be used by clinicians to manage symptoms during, in between, and sometimes in place of, in-office review appointments, according to NICE.

These five technologies generally comprise a wearable (though the number of devices and place where they are worn would vary from one system to another) and associated software and management app. Only products capable of generating results with no input, or limited input, from the user have been included in this assessment, reports FirstWord HealthTech.

“Parkinson’s is the world’s second most common neurodegenerative disease and a significant cause of disability. Patient's quality of life and disease progression strongly depend on the consistent, prompt staging of the disease and optimal timing as well as dosing of the prescribed therapy," said Professor Ray Chaudhuri, head of Parkinson's research at King's College Hospital, who has been piloting PDMonitor with private patients since March 2022.

“PDMonitor is supporting a paradigm shift in Parkinson’s care by improving the quality and timeliness of information physicians have to assess the disease. Monitoring patients at home, continuously while they conduct everyday activities, allows treatment decisions to be made more frequently and physicians to respond faster to changing symptoms. While you cannot reverse Parkinson’s, you can delay the deterioration of symptoms and possibly decrease the risk of falling. Optimizing care means the disease progresses slower in time and the therapeutic window is kept open.”