Better monitoring of people with neurodegenerative diseases

Many people in the world suffer from neurodegenerative diseases. In Spain alone it is estimated that there are more than 160,000 people affected by Parkinson's disease, although different studies determine figures between 86,000 and 300,000 people. In the case of Alzheimer's disease, the figures rise to 800,000 affected, of which 30% are undiagnosed. Adequately monitoring patients so that health professionals know exactly what difficulties they face in their daily lives is vital in order to address and personalize the treatments of these patients in order to improve their quality of life.

With this objective, a team of researchers from the Higher Technical School of Telecommunications Engineers (ETSIT) of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) has developed PROCare4Life, a platform that allows continuous monitoring of patients with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's and sends reports to medical personnel on an ongoing basis.

“Currently, this type of patient has periodic visits to the hospital to monitor their condition, but the medical staff must rely on what the patient tells them during that visit. Can we improve this by somehow monitoring those important events or situations that medical staff should know about in detail? That was the starting question we asked ourselves to develop the platform,” explains Alberto Belmonte, one of the UPM researchers participating in the project.

The platform, accessible to patients, caregivers and medical staff, allows continuous interaction between everyone and is based on two fundamental parts.

The first part has a series of sensors and wearable devices (which can be worn as clothing or parts of them), to detect and monitor different situations suffered by patients with Parkinson's disease and Parkinson's disease. Alzheimer's. “Different algorithms have been developed that, through artificial intelligence solutions, are capable of detecting events of interest such as situations of confusion, tremors, festination and freezing of movement, among others,” explains Belmonte.

The second part of the platform collects all this information in a centralized system that performs temporal analysis of the detected events, being able to identify more complex patterns. This solution is combined with a recommendation system fed by the analyzed data and medical staff in order to personalize different recommendations that are provided to patients. Medical personnel can also consult at any time on the platform all the data recorded and analyzed for events and patterns through graphical visualizations.

Monitoring key points inside the brain is vital to detect any anomalies that may arise in time. (Illustration: Amazings/NCYT)

“The system attempts to improve quality of life by providing recommendations, alerts, events and other relevant information to users in different interfaces,” says Belmonte.

With all this, health professionals can have a much more precise view of the patient's real condition and how their day-to-day life develops, which gives them the option to personalize treatments and, above all, to know what should be focused on. to improve their quality of life.

For researchers, this constant monitoring and the possibility of personalizing treatments, in addition to the fact that its use can be extended to those affected by other diseases in the field of dementia, is where the importance of their work lies.

“The applications are numerous in the field of medicine given that the platform opens the door to being extended not only to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's patients but also to other diseases of interest where more continuous monitoring is important. This allows for a more detailed personalized follow-up of each person, being able, for example, to select the most appropriate medications at all times or to quickly detect possible complications in the disease and be able to act more quickly,” they conclude.

Several universities have also participated in the work, which has been presented and published at different conferences and specialized media internationally (Maastricht University, the Westfaelische Wilhelms-Universitaet Muenster; the Universitatea de Medicina Si Farmacie'carol Davila' Din Bucuresti) ; different associations (Parkinson's Association of Madrid, the Wohlfahrtswerk für Baden-Württemberg, the Stichting International Foundation for Integrated Care); the Spitalul Universitar de Urgenta Bucuresti and Casa Di Cura Privata Del Policlinico Spa hospitals and the companies Kinetikos – Driven Solutions, Lda; Atos Spain SA, Stelar Security Technology Law Research Ug; Cns Saúde, Lda, Siveco Romania SA. (Source: UPM)