Last week,I met @edumaba_graham for the first time and it was such a great time for me. We spoke a lot about what this community seeks to achieve and about her research interest. She is into computer engineering and programming and interested in the use of wearable technology to understand patients systems, monitor patients and find objective ways in which this can compliment care in Ghana. This is quite novel, because we do not have any research done with wearable technology in Parkinson’s patients in the country.
We discussed the acceptability of such research in Ghana, the problems sometimes researchers face because we may want to know how motor systems like tremor affect a patient and develop wearable technology to understand it but that may not be the most worrying intervention for patients ,non motor symptoms such as sleep disturbance and orthostatic hypotension could be what influences them most.
We also discussed how to even start in the first place. Do we start with developing our own technology? Link up with commercial developers? Link up with others who have develop technology but not yet commercial?
Perhaps we could have few interested students like Gloria and others visit labs we can collaborate with to understand our options before we start. Gloria does have some experience from a placement she had in Switzerland.
At the end of our meeting, we agreed a more holistic, multi sensor wearable system coupled with a clinician facing dashboard could help generate a more composite score which can be correlated with clinician rated scales.
Whilst collecting genetic data for these patients, it will be interesting to digitally understand these patients with wearable technology to allow for earlier therapeutic intervention, reduce fall risk and improve Quality of life of patients.
If you are within this community and are in wearable technology, or can link us up with a lab, we would be grateful.
Let’s link up with community members for greater collaboration .
