Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) has been shown to have great potential to improve the lives of patients with a variety of neurological conditions and is an established therapy for Parkinson’s disease. However, a persistent problem in DBS is the extensive and costly time necessary to choose stimulation settings after the electrode leads are implanted.
This process is necessary to assure that patients are receiving the best therapeutic benefit from DBS with minimal side effects. Recent studies at the Medical College of Wisconsin (MCW) show that this time can be drastically reduced. Preliminary data from the use of an iPad-based clinical decision support system showed that programming time was reduced by more than 99 percent.
The Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) of Southeast Wisconsin has awarded a $25,000 “Innovations in Healthcare Delivery Pilot Model Grant”. CTSI program led by NIH’s National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences as part of a national consortium of top medical research institutions working together to improve human health by streamlining science.
Christopher R. Butson, PhD, Associate Professor at MCW and the Primary Investigator for the grant. With the CTSI grant, Dr. Butson’s research team plans to prospectively evaluate the clinical decision support system in the Movement Disorders Clinic at Froedtert Hospital. In this study, patients will be randomized after DBS surgery to receive standard care or to a group where DBS settings use the iPad decision support system.
Ultimately, this project will result in a decision support system for DBS provided on mobile devices to providers. This is expected to reduce the burden on patients and families and could improve access for DBS patients who have difficulty traveling to major surgery centers for post-operative care. Data gathered during the project will be used in a future project to develop a patient-centered approach to DBS programming where therapy will then be tailored to each patient’s individual symptoms.