A team of researchers from Birkbeck, University of London, has developed an app that lets people with Parkinson’s disease test their symptoms at home in just 4 minutes. Currently, patients only see a specialist once or twice a year, making it hard to track the condition’s progression. However, with the new app, that will change. New Scientist reports that the ‘CloudUPDRS’ app includes both self-assessment questions and physical tests using a smartphone’s sensors.
The first version of the app directly mimicked the role of a clinician, but, researcher George Roussos and his team have also added deep learning to the tool. This will allow future versions of CloudUPDRS to distinguish between good data, like a measurement of tremors, and bad data, like the smartphone being knocked. Currently, the system discards bad data with an accuracy of 92.5%. Further, the tool can even personalise assessments to provide a “quick test”, which measures only three symptoms that are most indicative.