Great Lakes Neuro Technology has received TGA approval to market their Kinesia technology in Australia. The KinesiaT product line has patient-worn motion sensors and a tablet computer to quantitatively assess tremor, bradykinesia, and dyskinesia associated with Parkinson’s disease. Other regulatory successes include FDA clearance, CE Mark, and ISO certification for Kinesia systems.
Physicians use a web interface to set up patient studies and to track symptom responses. Market applications include both in-clinic and home-based telemedicine patient care, assistance in programming deep brain stimulation, and quantitative endpoints to determine efficacy in clinical trials.
As adoption of Kinesia technology grows, Australia represents a unique opportunity. According to research, the incidence of Parkinson’s in Australia has grown 17 percent over the last six years with one in 350 Australians now living with the disease. This market coupled with the need for telemedicine tools in the region to improve care for remote populations provides a driver for entering the Australian market.
Kinesia’s infrastructure includes several key technology features for telemedicine and clinical trials. The patient take-home kit supports broadband data transfer directly from a patient’s home to a secure server. This allows physicians and researchers immediate online access to real-time symptom reports and video diaries. Next, miniature patient-worn motion sensors are integrated with wireless communications. This minimizes setup time and patient burden during home-based assessments.
Physicians and researchers can use their own tablets, or any smart mobile device or computer to view web-based reports plus color-coded mapping provides intuitive quantitative tools to document symptom severity and motor fluctuations.
Great Lakes Neuro technologies will be showcasing the technology at the Movement Disorders Society Conference in Sydney, Australia in June 2013. For more information, go to www.glneurotech.com.
