Great Lakes Neuro Technologies (GLNT) www.gineurotech.com will use $1.5 million in funding from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to expand their Parkinson’s monitoring technology to include mobile applications funded through the SBIR program.
Monitoring symptoms with patient-worn sensors and connecting clinicians and Parkinson’s patients through telemedicine can expand access to care for underserved populations and improve opportunities for medication timing or deep brain stimulation.
Today, individuals with Parkinson’s are helped by wearing mobile sensors, the data is sent wirelessly from the sensors to the tablet, and then the tablet sends the data via 3G broadband to a cloud application for processing and reported to clinicians.
However, while this successful use of technology has moved into the clinical trials market, the price point required to support the tablet and broadband costs is not sustainable for wide spread acceptance into traditional patient care.
Leveraging mobile technology already in the pockets of many individuals can significantly reduce costs, provide scalability for the patient care market, and connect underserved populations without access to care to clinicians.
According to Joseph P. Giuffrida, PhD, President and Principal Investigator at GLNT, “Transitioning GLNT’s Kinesia technology to apps leverages our existing product and cloud infrastructure as well as our strong intellectual property covering the technology, able to assess symptoms, and then adjust drug delivery or deep brain stimulation therapy based on measure symptoms”.
Company executives positively think that recent shifts in healthcare paradigms such as the growing number of FDA approved apps, expanded telemedicine reimbursement, and accountable care cost policies have created an environment where apps can play a major role in healthcare delivery for the Parkinson’s community. The company is targeting the release of the app-based technology by the end of 2014 for both the U.S and European markets.