Potential of APDM mobility lab for the monitoring of the progression of Parkinson’s disease

ABSTRACT

APDM’s Mobility Lab system provides portable, validated, reliable, objective measures of balance and gait that are sensitive to Parkinson’s disease (PD). In this review, we describe the potential of objective measures collected with the Mobility Lab system for tracking longitudinal progression of PD. Balance and gait are among the most important motor impairments influencing quality of life for people with PD. Mobility Lab uses body-worn, Opal sensors on the legs, trunk and arms during prescribed tasks, such as the instrumented Get Up and Go test or quiet stance, to quickly quantify the quality of balance and gait in the clinical environment. The same Opal sensors can be sent home with patients to continuously monitor the quality of their daily activities. Objective measures have the potential to monitor progression of mobility impairments in PD throughout its course to improve patient care and accelerate clinical trials.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobility
• Parkinson’s disease
• inertial sensors
• objective measures
• mobility lab

Financial and competing interests disclosure

This review has been supported by NIH grants: 1R41 HD071760-03, 2R01 AG006457-29, K99 HD078492 01A1, and RC1 NS068678; and by Kinetics foundation grants. Oregon Health and Science University and F Horak have a significant financial interest in APDM, a company that may have a commercial interest in the results of this research and technology. This potential institutional and individual conflict has been reviewed and managed by OHSU. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.