npj Parkinson's Disease (May 2024)

Digital outcome measures from smartwatch data relate to non-motor features of Parkinson’s disease

  • Ann-Kathrin Schalkamp,
  • Neil A. Harrison,
  • Kathryn J. Peall,
  • Cynthia Sandor

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41531-024-00719-w
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 7

Abstract

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Abstract Monitoring of Parkinson’s disease (PD) has seen substantial improvement over recent years as digital sensors enable a passive and continuous collection of information in the home environment. However, the primary focus of this work has been motor symptoms, with little focus on the non-motor aspects of the disease. To address this, we combined longitudinal clinical non-motor assessment data and digital multi-sensor data from the Verily Study Watch for 149 participants from the Parkinson’s Progression Monitoring Initiative (PPMI) cohort with a diagnosis of PD. We show that digitally collected physical activity and sleep measures significantly relate to clinical non-motor assessments of cognitive, autonomic, and daily living impairment. However, the poor predictive performance we observed, highlights the need for better targeted digital outcome measures to enable monitoring of non-motor symptoms.