Author Spotlight: Automated Deep Brain Stimulation for Parkinson's Disease - Exploring the Possibilities and Challenges of Home Monitoring

My research supports automating adaptive deep brain stimulation or ADBS for Parkinson’s disease in the comfort of someone’s home. One question is whether this therapy can be monitored safely for a long period outside the clinic while ensuring patient privacy. Additionally, we’re looking into the possibility of automatically adjusting ADBS parameters without the need for the patient to return to the clinic.

ADBS research needs data collection platforms to accurately measure movement quality as patients go about their daily lives and to remotely deliver updates to therapy algorithms. This protocol collects multiple modalities as patients move freely about their homes, including video data to capture isolated kinematic like finger movements. Our results allow us to explore changes in Parkinson’s disease over long periods of time, and they let us ask what measurements are necessary to analyze and treat the varied symptoms of Parkinson’s disease outside clinical observation.