Developing and Validating Web-based Clinical Assessments for Parkinson's Disease

Objective/Rationale:
Parkinson's disease clinical research traditionally relies on patient recruitment, which can be hindered by the amount of travel a patient must undertake to visit sites for evaluations and long visits, especially if motor fluctuations have to be assessed. Advances in technology, particularly the extensive use of the Internet, may offer an opportunity to address logistical hurdles that prevent widespread enrolment of PD subjects in clinical research projects. The goal of this project is to create a web application with a visible and accessible user interface, clinically useful in terms of patient compliance and data quality collection, and to compare it with office-based assessments.

Project Description:
Forty patients with idiopathic PD will be assessed at baseline, three months, and six months using both Web-based assessments and office-based assessments at each time point, but in randomized order and always within two weeks of one another. Patients will be assessed for motor severity and motor complications using the UPDRS and Dyskinesia Rating scales, and timed tests, quality of life by using the PDQ-39 scale, and non-motor symptoms by using the NMS scale. Feasibility of the Web-based assessments, and their reproducibility, data precision and administrative burden compared to the office-based assessments will be determined.

Relevance to Diagnosis/Treatment of Parkinson’s Disease:
If Web-based assessment proves a valid procedure to evaluate people with PD, it will have the potential to improve the clinical research recruitment for multicenter clinical trials and clinical care, especially for patients with advanced disease, and to decrease the burden of traveling for a patient to undertake visit sites for evaluations.