Assessment of Bradykinesia, Akinesia and Rigidity Using a Home-based Assessment Tool

An increase in the prevalence of age related diseases such as Parkinson's Disease (PD) and the increasingly aging population has created a need for appropriate health and social care services for the elderly and disabled. PD requires close monitoring and regular assessment. In order to be assessed and monitored, people are usually required to attend a clinic or hospital. In this study a home-based assessment tool, which collects information on people’s hand and finger movements, has been developed and evaluated. The tool collects data on the time taken to make a series of movements, the speed at which the movements are made and the path that is taken for each movement. Through the use of this tool movement difficulties such as bradykinesia, akinesia and rigidity could be identified within the home environment. Such an approach has the potential to decrease the number of clinic/hospital visits a person with PD requires. It could also assist with making the current, somewhat subjective, methods of PD assessment become more objective. If used over a long period of time, for example, daily or weekly, it could help identify how effective or otherwise a person's medication is. This would be achieved by the tool collecting data on a regular basis in order to establish what is considered to be ‘normal’ results for that particular person. So for example, a pattern may emerge over a few months that each time a particular participant is ‘off’ they take the same or similar length of time to use the tool. It could be suggested that the length of time the participant took to use the tool when ‘off’ during those months was their ‘normal’ result for their ‘off’ state. If, after a period of time, the results collected seemed ‘abnormal’ for that person it could indicate that a visit to the clinician is needed to identify if the medication needs changed. The developed tool was evaluated by twenty participants. Half of the participants had been diagnosed with PD and the other half were a control group without the disease. Within each group there were a mix of participants who were computer literate and those who had no experience of using computers. Results following evaluation of the tool indicated that the control group were able to conduct assessments using the tool in a time that was significantly shorter than that taken by the PD group (p = 0.034). This in turn suggests that such tools have the ability to assist with enabling more objective assessment of PD.