MIAMI, June 23, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The National Parkinson Foundation
(NPF) and the Kinetics Foundation are
pleased to announce their partnership to evaluate Kinetic’s
Objective Parkinson’s Disease Measurement (OPDM) system as a tool
for more accurately measuring the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease
(PD). The evaluation will take place at six NPF Centers of
Excellence enrolled in NPF’s groundbreaking Quality Improvement
Initiative (QII).
“It is our hope that our OPDM system can help more accurately
measure the results of treatments than the rating scales the
medical community has been commonly using up until today,” said Ken
Kubota, program director of the Kinetics Foundation.
NPF will integrate the OPDM system into QII, the largest
prospective study of PD in history with over 4,000 patients
enrolled at 19 centers in four countries. The study aims to reveal
current patterns in clinical practice, drive quality improvement in
PD care and spawn comparative effectiveness research. Data
collection covers key areas necessary to identify and improve care
quality such as comorbidities, medications and exercise. The
evaluation is expected to be completed in early 2012.
“We are thrilled to have this opportunity to evaluate these
devices,” said Peter N. Schmidt, PhD, NPF’s VP of programs and CIO.
“We hope that the rich information provided by the sensors will
give additional insight into the motor symptoms of PD and help us
to understand the benefits of different clinical approaches.”
The OPDM system is comprised of both dexterity and mobility
measurement devices, which communicate to a central server via the
Internet. Researchers access the data on this central server
through a web interface. The OPDM system is likely to emerge as the
first to measure PD patient symptoms objectively, rather than
subjectively. The OPDM system consists of
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