Abstract Details

Title Remote Monitoring of Neurological Patients

Topic Multiple Sclerosis

Presentation(s) P14 - Poster Session 14 (11:45 AM-12:45 PM)

Poster/Presentation
Number 3-018

Background There is a world-wide shortage of neurologists, which is predicted to only worsen as the world population ages. This shortage along with the recent Covid-related restrictions, has resulted in fewer neurological exams and this can result in a delayed diagnosis and cause suboptimal care for the patient. DTM Health worked with NIH to address this “gap in care” with a self-administered mobile app that can remotely monitor a patient’s condition.

Objective

Our long-term goal is to employ smartphone-embedded sensors to measure various neurological functions in a patient-autonomous manner. The interim goal is to develop simple smartphone tests and evaluate the clinical utility of these tests by selecting optimal outcomes that correlate well with clinician-measured disability in different neurological domains.

Design/Methods

We hypothesized that aggregating data from two simple smartphone tests of fine finger movements with differing contributions of specific neurological domains ( strength, cerebellar functions, vision, and reaction time) will allow establishment of secondary outcomes that reflect domain-specific deficit.

This hypothesis was tested by assessing correlations of smartphone-derived outcomes with relevant parts of neurological examination in multiple sclerosis patients. We developed a mobile app consisting of two simple tests: Finger Tapping and Balloon Popping.

The study consisted of 76 multiple sclerosis (MS) patients and 19 healthy volunteers (HV). The balloon popping and finger tapping tests were self-administered by the participants while the 9-hole peg test (9HPT) was administered by an investigator.

Results

The primary outcomes of smartphone tests, the average number of taps and the average number of pops differentiated MS from HV with similar power to traditional, investigator-administered test of fine finger movements of 9HPT.

Conclusions In the time necessary for performing 9HPT, smartphone tests provide much richer and reliable measurements of several distinct neurological functions. This data suggests that combining more creatively-construed smartphone apps may one day recreate the entire neurological examination.

Authors/Disclosures
Marc Fischer (Dogtown Media) PRESENTER	Marc Fischer has nothing to disclose.