Part of: Oura Ring: on therapeutics and digital biomarkers
Let’s investigate Parkinson’s for digital biomarker-guided therapy:
One challenge in Parkinson’s Disease is the narrow therapeutic window, especially as the disease progresses, where previously effective doses of levodopa no longer provide adequate motor symptom control. Increasing the dose doesn’t necessarily help. If one overshoots the narrow therapeutic window, patients could enter dyskinesia, characterized by unpleasant involuntary and erratic motions.
This is how the optimization of the therapy could happen:
- The ring’s algorithms continuously analyze its measurements against the patient’s baseline patterns and known indicators of symptom progression. When significant deviations are detected – such as increasing tremor intensity or disrupted sleep patterns – an alert is sent to the patient.
- The alerts provide better guiding of the timing or titration of the doses based on actual motor function, or sleep and activity patterns.
- Also, the ring could be used in remote patient monitoring and connected care. So not only could it guide therapy for the patient, but put the caregiver in the loop. Treatment adjustments can happen faster than waiting for the next visit to the clinic.
Isn’t that the dream of connected care?
Digital biomarker-guided therapy with the Oura ring could reduce burden (and inaccuracies) on the patient to self-report; enable proactive rather than reactive care; create a data-driven conversation between all stakeholders; provide objective metrics for care decisions; and, primarily, could reduce emergency situations through earlier intervention.
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