Internet of things in the assessment, diagnostics and treatment of Parkinson's disease

摘要

Current demographic trends indicate that there is a growing number of older population groups worldwide, which is associated with an increase of chronic neurological disorders such as Parkinson's disease that burdens the country's healthcare system. Therefore there is an urgent call for developing efficient strategies which could reduce the healthcare costs and meet the demand of older people affected by these chronic neurological diseases at affordable cost. One of such approaches is the exploitation of a new emerging platform in the form of Internet of Things (IoT), which takes advantage of the connection of any physical object, for example a smartphone, to the Internet. The purpose of this study is to explore the use of IoT in the management of Parkinson's disease (PD), specifically in its assessment, diagnostics, and treatment. The methods used in this study include a literature review of available sources found in the world's acknowledged databases Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, and ScienceDirect, as well as the methods of comparison and evaluation of the findings from the selected studies. The findings show that IoT may serve as an appropriate healthcare platform. IoT seems to be efficient, cost-effective and affordable approach in the management of chronic neurological disorders such as PD. However, more research has to be done by conducting more randomized controlled trials with larger samples of subjects in the area of the use of IoT in PD, as well as in other chronic neurological diseases.