Challenges of Parkinson's disease: User experiences with STOP

Abstract

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, impacting an estimated seven to ten million people worldwide. Measuring the symptoms and progress of the disease, and medication effectiveness is currently performed using subjective measures and visual estimation. We developed and evaluated a mobile application, STOP for tracking hand's motor symptoms, and a medication journal for recording medication intake. We followed 13 PD patients from two countries for a 1-month long real-world deployment. We found that PD patients are willing to use digital tools, such as STOP, to track their medication intake and symptoms, and are also willing to share such data with their caregivers and medical personnel to improve their own care.