Could Your Smartwatch Help Diagnose Parkinson's Earlier?

Parkinson's disease impacts around 500,000 people in the U.S. alone. A new study suggests that smartwatches like the Apple Watch and Fitbit could help diagnose the disease seven years before symptoms set in.

By Joshua Rapp Learn
Sep 25, 2023 3:00 PM
Person struggling to hold a glass showing Parkinson's disease symptoms
(Credit: meeboonstudio/Shutterstock)

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Smartwatches may be able to buy potential Parkinson’s patients valuable time when it comes to diagnosis.

New research reveals that these devices can detect the degenerative condition years before the symptoms become serious, based solely on the movement and sleep patterns of those who wear them.

“Parkinson’s disease is primarily a movement disorder and we know that before a clinical diagnosis is made where all these motor symptoms have to be present, there’s a long phase where neuronal damage already occurs,” says Ann-Kathrin Schalkamp, a computational biologist at Cardiff University. “We know that if we want to treat it, we need to target people before all this early damage occurs.”

How Is Parkinson's Disease Traditionally Diagnosed?

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