The medical device predicts outcomes such as falls, cognitive decline and hospital admissions using only motor data from the phone.
A medical device provider claims its app can phenotype Parkinson’s. Kneu Health splits patients into three clinical subtypes using only motor data from the phone, as well as predicting outcomes such as falls, cognitive decline, hospital admissions and quality of life.
It has also found that the group with the worst motor scores had the worst cognition and the most admissions.
The app, aiming to form a novel approach to digital phenotyping, studied more than 800 patients at 11 NHS sites, plus Cedars-Sinai and Mass General Brigham in the US. Together, they contributed to more than one million clinical observations.
Streamlining diagnosis
Kneu Health hopes its app will allow doctors better to establish a patient’s subtype of Parkinson’s. Whether it’s tremor-dominant, postural instability, or motor-preserved drives, and for which treatment the patient is eligible.
Currently, doctors decipher this by eye, in a short exam once or twice a year.
The platform is the first Food and Drug Administration-cleared device for Parkinson’s and follows over a decade of research from the University of Oxford.
Kneu co-founder and chief medical officer Kinan Muhammed unveiled the results at the American Academy of Neurology annual meeting in Chicago in April.
Last year, the Medical Research Council Centre of Research Excellence also announced plans to develop brain stimulation devices to treat neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s.
