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.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“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.
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