Parkinson's disease (PD) is neurodegenerative disorder, which usually occurs after the age of 60 and in some cases even earlier. One of the most notable and severe symptoms are tremor, bradykinesia (slow-movement), rigidity and postural instability. Medical sciences haven’t found a cure for the PD, however there are treatments like Dopamine treatment and Deep Brain Stimulation, which may alleviate the symptoms. The most frequently used Dopamine treatment, may have severe side effect, such as Dyskinesia, which brings new barrier into PD patients’ lives: the severity of Dyskinesia is related to the level of drug administration to PD patients.
Various approaches to addressing Dyskinesia do exist, but none of them administers PD drugs according to individual patient needs. This research proposes the use of mobile and wireless hardware and software technologies for estimating the severity of PD symptoms, and administering PD drugs according to the measurements of PD patient’s pressures of his/her finger on the screen of a mobile device. This pressure, translated into analogue voltage, and digital bits, with the help of CPLD (Complex Programming Logic Device) is sent to a smart phone and taken by an App in the Android environment. The computations performed by the App will through FFT (Fast Fourier Transformations), Reaction time and Movement time calculate the severity of the PD symptoms and decide on the appropriate amount of drug administration for that patient, at the moment when the measurement has been taken. The novelty of the proposal is twofold. It allows a high level of personalisation in the PD treatment and uses the latest hardware and software technologies to bring new solution in the field of drug administration to PD patients. The research also debates the issue of creating new gadgets for pervasive healthcare, which is juxtaposed to the powerful Android operating environments and proliferation of smart phones. They can together challenge our need for developing more healthcare gadgets in future.
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