A new program launched by neurologists at the University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) www.urmc.rochester.edu is going to expand access to care and serve as a national model for the management of Parkinson’s disease and other chronic illnesses.
The “Parkinson’s Disease Care New York” program supported by grants from the Greater Rochester Health Foundation www.thegrht.org and the Edmond J. Safra Foundation www.edmondjsafra.org will be a largely virtual network to provide free care to as many as 500 underserved patients across the State of New York. Participants will be able to interact via a secure web-based teleconferencing system with Parkinson’s disease specialists at URMC.
Physicians and nurses at URMC will develop and regularly reevaluate coordinated care plans for each patient. Participants will be able to us iPhones and use the mPower app developed by URMC and Sage Bionetworks http://sagebase.org to track and share information on their symptoms with their physicians. The app initially designed as a research study uses sensors in the iPhone to measure dexterity, voice fluctuations, balance and gait, and memory.
In another step forward to help individuals with Parkinson’s disease, AMC Health www.amchealth.com and URMC have enrolled their first patient in a remote clinical trial. The study is part of a larger Phase III clinical trial and will integrate the use of video, biometric data collections, and onscreen assessments. The remote trial is being led by researchers at the University of Rochester with support from NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) www.ninds.nih.gov.
About 40 participants at ten clinical research sites will be enrolled with participants completing several virtual visits over the course of the study in conjunction with in-person visits in the larger Phase III study.
Virtual visits will be conducted via the telehealth platform which deploys a mobile solution including a smart phone and biometric sensor devices to collect a range of data. The study will measure whether it is feasible to conduct remote assessments, the reliability of remote assessment as compared to an in-person assessment, and the value of virtual research visits as measured by time and travel saved.
As Michael O’ Brien, President Clinical Trials Division at AMC Health said, “The life of a Parkinson’s patient can be challenging. Telehealth can decrease the burden on these patients and their caregivers by allowing clinical trial visits to be conducted in their home.”