Wearing-off phenomenon is experienced by Parkinson’s disease (PD) patients when their symptoms re-appear before their next medicine intake. Over time, the medicine’s effective time shortens, causing discomfort among PD patients. Thus, PD patients and clinicians must monitor and record the patient symptom changes for adequate treatment.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is a slowly progressive nervous system condition caused by the loss of dopamine-producing brain cells. It primarily affects the patient's motor abilities, but it also has an impact on non-motor functions over time. Patients' symptoms include tremors, muscle stiffness, and difficulty walking and balancing. Then it disrupts the patients' sleep, speech, and mental functions, affecting their quality of life (QoL).
With the improvement of wearable devices, patients can be continuously monitored with the help of cell phones and fitness trackers. We use these technologies to monitor patients' health, record WO periods, and document the impact of treatment on their symptoms in order to predict the wearing-off phenomenon in Parkinson's disease patients.
Challenge Goal and Task: The goal of this challenge is to forecast the wearing-off in the next hour given past data. In a real-world setting, a smartphone app is used to collect fitness tracker data and self-reported symptoms. This will help the doctors to create specific treatment strategies to manage Parkinson's disease and its associated symptoms properly. Participants are tasked to create a model that can anticipate the "wearing-off" of anti-PD medication. The original project is one of the 2022 Garmin Health Awards winners.