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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Digit. Health
Sec. Connected Health
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fdgth.2024.1435693
This article is part of the Research Topic Digital Remote Patient Monitoring in Neurodegenerative Diseases View all 5 articles

Acceptability of Digital Health Technologies in Early Parkinson's Disease: Lessons from WATCH-PD

Provisionally accepted
Tairmae Kangarloo Tairmae Kangarloo 1*Robert D. Latzman Robert D. Latzman 1Jamie L. Adams Jamie L. Adams 2Earl R. Dorsey Earl R. Dorsey 2Melissa Kostrzebski Melissa Kostrzebski 2Joan Severson Joan Severson 3David Anderson David Anderson 4Fay Horak Fay Horak 5Diane Stephenson Diane Stephenson 6Joshua Cosman Joshua Cosman 7
  • 1 Takeda Development Centers Americas, Lexington, United States
  • 2 University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States
  • 3 Other, Seattle, United States
  • 4 Clinical Ink, Horsham, Pennsylvania, United States
  • 5 Oregon Health and Science University, Portland, Oregon, United States
  • 6 Critical Path Institute, Tucson, Arizona, United States
  • 7 AbbVie (United States), North Chicago, Illinois, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Digital health technologies (DHTs) have the potential to alleviate challenges experienced in clinical trials through more objective, naturalistic, and frequent assessments of functioning. However, implementation of DHTs come with their own challenges, including acceptability and ease of use for study participants. In addition to acceptability, it is also important to understand device proficiency in the general population and within patient populations who may be asked to use DHTs for extended periods of time. We thus aimed to provide an overview of participant feedback on acceptability of DHTs, including body-worn sensors used in the clinic and a mobile application used at-home, used throughout the duration of the Wearable Assessments in the Clinic and at Home in Parkinson's Disease (WATCH-PD) study, an observational, longitudinal study looking at disease progression in early Parkinson's Disease (PD). 82 participants with PD and 50 control participants were enrolled at 17 sites throughout the United States and followed for 12 months. We assessed participants' general device proficiency at baseline, using the Mobile Device Proficiency Questionnaire (MDPQ). The mean MDPQ score at Baseline did not significantly differ between PD patients and healthy controls (20.6 [2.91] vs 21.5 [2.94], p=.10). Questionnaire results demonstrated that participants had generally positive views on the comfort and use of the digital technologies throughout the duration of the study, regardless of group. This is the first study to evaluate patient feedback and impressions of using technology in a longitudinal observational study in early Parkinson's Disease. Results demonstrate device proficiency and acceptability of various DHTs in people with Parkinson's does not differ from that of neurologically healthy older adults, and, overall, participants had a favorable view of the DHTs deployed in the WATCH-PD study.

    Keywords: Digital tool, Patient feedback, Parkinson, Wearability, Wearabe sensors

    Received: 20 May 2024; Accepted: 02 Aug 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kangarloo, Latzman, Adams, Dorsey, Kostrzebski, Severson, Anderson, Horak, Stephenson and Cosman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Tairmae Kangarloo, Takeda Development Centers Americas, Lexington, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.