Enhanced sensitivity to disease progression using digital health technologies in early Parkinson’s disease

Abstract Digital health technologies show promise for improving the measurement of Parkinson’s disease in clinical research and trials. However, it currently isn’t clear whether digital measures demonstrate enhanced sensitivity to disease progression compared to traditional measurement approaches. To this end, we develop a wearable sensor-based digital algorithm for deriving features of upper and lower-body bradykinesia and establish clinical validity by investigating convergent validity with appropriate clinical constructs, known groups validity, and test-retest reliability. Importantly, we demonstrate superior sensitivity of digital measures for distinguishing 1-year longitudinal change in early-stage PD relative to corresponding clinical constructs. Our results demonstrate the potential of digital health technologies to enhance sensitivity to disease progression relative to existing measurement standards and may constitute the basis for use as drug development tools in clinical research.