Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and particularly prevalent in Saxony due to its demographics. Fluctuation of symptoms over time represents one of the main challenges for patient care, making it difficult for the clinician to adjust treatment plans. Currently, symptom tracking relies on patient self-reports or difficult to use specialist hardware and software (e.g., body sensor-based systems). This project aims to develop and implement a digital assistant (DA) for mobile devices (e.g., smartphones), which enables continuous home monitoring. The DA interacts with the patient via natural language (speech or text) and is specifically designed to be easy to use and motivate users to continuously use it. The voice and video data gathered during the interaction is analysed via state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms to report the severity of PD symptoms. In the end, clinicians are provided with fine-grained and AI-supported symptom reports, which enable better care for PD patients.
Establishing digital assistants for improving care for Parkinson’s disease |
Medical Need
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is common and treatable. It is the second most common neurodegenerative disease and particularly prevalent in Saxony due to its demographic. PD leads to the clinical cardinal symptoms of rigidity, bradykinesia and tremor. Additional symptoms include a tendency to fall, impaired speech, and non-motor symptoms. Unlike other neurodegenerative diseases, PD is highly treatable with medical and surgical options that can significantly and persistently improve patients’ and caregivers’ quality of life. However, the severity of symptoms is naturally fluctuating, leading to difficulties to assess treatments success and planning future treatments.
The project aims to develop a digital assistant for mobile devices, which conducts a natural language conversation with the patient. The assistant will capture, document and analyze Parkinson’s disease symptoms, using AI-methods to analyze data from the device’s camera and microphone.
Digital Assistant, Parkinson’s disease, symptom monitoring, AI-based analysis
Project team members |
Clinician |
TU Dresden, Faculty of Medicine, University Hospital Dresden, Department of Neurology
Project team members |
High-tech |
TU Dresden, Chair of Business Information Systems, esp. Intelligent Systems and Services