New app to track symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects movement. The disease gradually progresses over time and is characterised by a variety of motor and non-motor symptoms, such as tremors, changes in walking patterns, stiffness, as well as difficulties with balance and speech. At present, there is no known cure for Parkinson’s Disease (PD).

My Moves Matter, the company behind this new app was co-founded by registered dietitian Richelle Flanagan after she noticed something was wrong with her handwriting when trying to document a note in a patient’s chart. She was diagnosed with Young Onset Parkinson’s Disease (YOPD) shortly after the birth of her daughter.

New app to track symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease

In response, this Irish female founder and patient innovator co -founded My Moves Matters and developed an app to help women manage their PD symptoms in line with their menstrual cycles. The app is proving a success and currently has over 1600 users from 47 countries. My Moves Matters aims to improve the lives of Irish women living with PD and was one of the winners of Health Innovation Hub Ireland’s Femtech competition in 2023.

A medical paper entitled ‘Unmet Needs of Women Living with Parkinson’s Disease: Gaps and Controversies’, co-authored by Richelle Flanagan, highlights the issues women with the PD experience, especially from a psychosocial standpoint, which have been overlooked. There is a need for management of PD which considers the impact of the hormonal stages women experience, including menstrual cycles.

Current clinical guidelines fail to address the nuanced impact of hormonal changes on PD symptoms adequately, resulting in fragmented care for women. The My Moves Matter app has come up with a solution and seeks to bridge this gap by enabling detailed patient-reported outcome tracking. This initiative not only aims to gather specific data to understand the link between hormone fluctuations and PD but also to inform the development of personalised patient care programmes, including medical nutrition therapy tailored to individual needs.

The My Moves Matter app is unique as it puts people with Parkinson’s disease in control of understanding their own body and mind’s reaction to PD. The app helps people to understand their individual symptoms, what triggers them and what works or does not work for their individual experience.

This patient reported symptom tracker has several notable features: medication reminders tablets, patterns identification, hormonal impact tracking, gain knowledge, share decision making and help find answers.

The results of the clinical evaluation study with Health Innovation Hub Ireland were impressive. Clinicians recognised the main benefits of the My Move Matter app which included the ability to view detailed data between clinic visits and to accurately track medication user-friendliness for patients and staff. The clinicians, PD Neurologists and nurses, stressed the importance of tracking hormonal impacts in women with PD as it is currently underserved and they highlighted this aspect as an excellent feature of the app. Knowing detailed information such as medication timing, doses, mealtimes, sleep patterns and bowel movement patterns was also considered critical for comprehensive patient management.

Dr. Tanya Mulcahy Director of Health Innovation Hub Ireland and founder of FemTech Ireland commented on the importance of the app in addressing women’s health issues:

“Recognising the unique ways Parkinson’s and other neurological conditions manifest in women isn’t just about fairness—it’s about better diagnosis, better treatments, and better lives. This pivotal work conducted by Richelle through the My Moves Matter App highlights how women’s hormone cycles impact symptoms and treatment efficacy. This is such important work aand should be highlighted and commended.

The whole area of women’s health and in particular the different ways conditions manifest and respond to treatments between men and women is fascinating but still in its infancy, with technology advancements like this, we can track interrogate and evaluate to deliver better outcomes for patients”.

Richelle Flanagan welcomed the launch of the study to mark International Brain Awareness Week:

“We were delighted to win the HIHI FemTech opportunity to carry out a clinical evaluation of the utility of the My MovesMatter app with Parkinson’s neurologists and Parkinson’s Disease  specialist nurses. It provided us the opportunity to learn what they found useful in the current app and what would make life easier for them. We look forward to acting on their invaluable advice.”

About Health Innovation Hub Ireland (HIHI)

HIHI was established by the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation and the Department of Health and is supported by Enterprise Ireland (EI) and the Health Service Executive (HSE) to drive collaboration between the health service and enterprise. We offer companies the opportunity for pilot and clinical evaluation studies, and we provide the health service access to innovative products, services and devices that they may not otherwise be aware of.

HIHI is built on the premise that collaboration with enterprise can benefit patient care, patient pathways and outcomes. We assess all concepts for healthcare innovation from those on the frontline – ranging from clinician to porter. We encourage healthcare professionals to get in touch with HIHI if they have an idea or solution that would make something in their job work better. https://hih.ie/

About My Moves Matter

For full details of the https://www.mymovesmatter.com/

Research paper

Unmet Needs of Women Living with Parkinson’s Disease: Gaps and Controversies

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35060180/

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