Help, innovative project to remotely and real-time monitor Parkinson's patients

Telefónica, the Garraf Sanitary Consortium (Abat Foundation ) and the UPC have presented the Help project, that improves the quality of life of Parkinson's patients with a real-time remote monitoring and medication system.

The system of Telefónica, he Sanitario Garraf Consortium, through the Abat Foundation, and the UPC It consists of a small portable sensor that captures the patient's movements, and a subcutaneous pump, who administers medication to control the disease.

The sensor detects the patient's worsening and informs the system, which in turn, via mobile, instructs the drug pump to increase the dose and treat symptoms. When the patient improves, the dose of medication delivered by the pump returns to normal, and thus you always receive the necessary dose in real time.

All sensor information and patient reactions to medication are sent to a support center, which is also part of the system, from which specialists control the devices through the Internet and observe the evolution of the patients who use them, as well as interact with the patient and intervene in cases where necessary.

The first phase of the project has already been completed with a pilot on seven patients, six of them in Spain, which began in November 2012 and ended in March 2013. In four of them considerable benefits were seen and in two, forced to use 'rescue injections', the number of these was reduced and the other two considerably increased the time without symptoms.

Currently there is no treatment for these patients that resolves the symptoms just when they occur.. With this project, action is taken dynamically and in real time based on symptoms, thus improving the patient's quality of life.

This project is the result of the work of a European consortium led by Telefónica and participated by German companies. (HSG-IMIT y Neusta), Israelites (The fist in Peh-Med), Italian (Telecom Italia and the University of Palermo) and spanish (Telefónica R&D, Polytechnic University of Catalonia and Abat).