Description
Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a chronic disease of the central nervous system affecting 2.5 mln people worldwide, with the highest penetration in Europe. There are ca 1000 patients in Estonia and 5000 in Norway suffering the disease today, affecting mostly young people. Today there are no technological solutions and methodologies to monitor MS patients’ condition at home, which results in frequent quarterly hospital visits for just a short visual inspection. Furthermore, there are no medical technology tools for discovering small changes in patients’ condition for preventive care and qualitative assessment of treatment efficiency. The objective of this project is to develop a home-based patient condition monitoring system that is integrated with an existing home telecare platform for bridging patients and clinicians. By the end of the project, a pre-commercial prototype of home-based patient condition monitoring system will be developed for further commercialization in target markets.
Summary of project results
The project targeted the development of an ICT solution for home-based assessment of neurodegenerative disease patients with a focus on Multiple Sclerosis (MS). MS is a chronic disease of the Central Nervous System affecting ca 2.5 mln people worldwide. There are ca 1000 MS patients in Estonia. MS is characterized by disease relapses followed by remissions. Contemporary treatments decrease the number of relapses in a substantial number of MS patients. However, patients need permanent monitoring of their condition by neurologists for detecting relapses and monitoring disease activity. Prior to the project, there were no technological solutions and methodologies to monitor MS patients’ condition at home. Therefore, all patients have to undergo frequent clinic visits for just a short visual inspection. Even more, there were no medical technology tools for discovering small changes in patient’ condition (detection of relapses) for preventive care and qualitative assessment of treatment efficiency. Within the project a precommercial prototype of home-based patient condition monitoring system was developed. Normative data for all individual patients was collected and a baseline set for home-based monitoring. The project produced a system for detecting changes in motor functions. The system consists of wireless wearable sensor(s), smartphone application, back-end motor signal processing software, patient database, secure web access page, and a patent condition evaluation methodology. The system is able to detect changes in motor function related to relapses and demonstrate stable results when the patients are stable. As an outcome, the amount of scheduled clinic visits is reduced up to 75%. Also, with the use of new technology MS patients can be monitored by nurses, physiotherapists etc and not neurologists only. The number of PwMS on treatment increases due to better adherence to treatments due to proven confirmaton of excellent treatment effect. Also, the number of patents on treatment increases with better access to specialist care.
Summary of bilateral results
The bilateral collaboration was extremely important for understanding the needs in different countries. Also, the shared experience about telecare solutions between clinical team, technology team and Norwegian partners had a huge impact on the development of the system from the beginning.The collaboration with the Norwegian partner is going to continue through further development of this project and planning next projects.