Free-living Monitoring of Parkinson's Disease Using Smart Objects: Towards Digital Medicine

Parkinson's disease, one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases of the central nervous system, presents motor symptoms, including tremor, rigidity, bradykinesia, and postural instability. Assessments of patients with Parkinson's disease are typically performed using clinical scales, compiled by the healthcare staff or by the patient. Although commonly used in clinical practice, they have some limitations, including the low temporal resolution of the scales, the low granularity of the scores and the possible low inter- and intra-operator reliability. The recent development of digital technologies has led to the creation of IoT (Internet of Things) devices capable of providing quantitative indicators, potentially useful for an accurate differential diagnosis, as well as for monitoring the effects of therapeutic interventions. The peculiarity of these systems is the ability to provide indicators not only during periodic visits to the clinic, but also the ability to remotely monitor the patient's daily life activities. In this scenario, this study wants to test the hypothesis that the IoT devices like smart-ink pens and insoles are usable options for monitoring patients with Parkinson's disease.