Health IT

IBM, Pfizer team on remote monitoring for Parkinson’s care

IBM and Pfizer will build a IoT ecosystem to measure the health and quality of life of Parkinson's patients.

By Neil Versel on April 07, 2016 5:54 pm
IBM Research Data Scientist Eric Clark explores wearable technologies that could help monitor and analyze biological data from study subjects on Thursday, April 7, 2016 at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown, NY. IBM and Pfizer are collaborating to create a first-of-a-kind remote monitoring system to support patients with ParkinsonÕs disease. This non-invasive, real-time approach to patient data will offer new insights into disease progression and treatment plans. By applying advanced analytics and machine learning to sensor data, the hope is to transform how neurological diseases are diagnosed and treated.

IBM Research Data Scientist Eric Clark explores wearable technologies that could help monitor and analyze data from people with Parkinson’s disease.

Watson Health may be getting all the headlines lately, but IBM’s research division is busy trying to improve healthcare as well. Thursday, Big Blue announced that it was collaborating with Pfizer to develop remote monitoring technology for treating Parkinson’s disease.

IBM and Pfizer will build an Internet-of-Things ecosystem to measure the health and quality of life of Parkinson’s patients. They want data collection to be as continuous and unobtrusive to the patient as possible.

Their sensors will gather real-time information from patients outside of a clinical environment. Then, IBM will apply machine learning to the data to help researchers advance their understanding of the disease and treatments.

“The problem in the field of chronic neurological diseases like Parkinson’s is that the symptoms that the patient experiences vary minute by minute,” Ajay Royyuru, director of healthcare and life sciences for IBM Research, said in a video supplied by the two companies. “You pretty much have to monitor the symptoms that the individual is having pretty much on a continuous basis.”

“We have an opportunity to potentially redefine how we think about patient outcomes and 24/7 monitoring, by combining Pfizer’s scientific, medical and regulatory expertise with IBM’s ability to integrate and interpret complex data in innovative ways,” Pfizer global R&D head Dr. Mikael Dolsten said in a statement.

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“The key to our success will be to deliver a reliable, scalable system of measurement and analysis that would help inform our clinical programs across important areas of unmet medical need, potentially accelerating the drug development and regulatory approval processes and helping us to get better therapies to patients, faster,” Dolsten added.

Photo: Feature Photo Service