Apple Watch Making ‘Unmistakable Progress’ In Identifying Parkinson’s Disease, New Report Says

In a post published on Wednesday, William Gallagher of AppleInsider reported on Apple Watch making “unmistakable progress” in identifying Parkinson’s disease. The breakthrough was unearthed in a story from medical publication Stat, where Mario Aguilar writes Apple’s smartwatch offers “a glimmer of hope” to patients who cope.

Parkinson’s is a chronic degenerative disorder that affects the motor system for which there currently is no cure. The exact cause of Parkinson’s is currently unknown, although scientists hypothesize genetic and environmental factors play significant roles in its onset.

According to Gallagher, Aguilar spoke with numerous sources in doing reporting for the story. They include patients, app developers, neurologists, and current and former Apple employees. The last of which includes Apple’s senior director of Apple Watch and health product marketing Deidre Caldbeck, who told Stat “physicians are missing the tools that they need to quantify these symptoms throughout the patient’s day.” In addition to Apple Watch, software tools such as StrivePD are indispensable in how they aid in continuous health monitoring throughout the day. This is more crucial with a condition like Parkinson’s insofar as one-off examinations can be counterproductive in detecting symptoms. They don’t always manifest in clinical settings.

“I always tell my residents the hospital is the perfect place to get the wrong impression about Parkinson’s tremor,” Bastiaan R. Bloem, a neurologist and professor at Netherlands-based Radboud University Medical Center, told Stat in an interview for Aguilar’s story.

Apple’s open-source ResearchKit APIs and Research app for iOS are tools that, when used in conjunction with Apple Watch, help doctors and researchers detect and treat diseases such as Parkinson’s and others.

“Hopefully that [Apple Watch] can help the medical community understand if the treatments are working, maybe they can adjust them, they can look at symptom tracking and management,” Caldbeck added. “It’s just one less thing for the patient to have to deal with and to worry about because the physician can hopefully just monitor it remotely.”

In August of last year, I reported on the official Parkinson’s website getting redesigned with a slew of new features. Among the most famous Parkinson’s patients include the late Muhammad Ali, as well as Michael J. Fox. The latter’s bout with the disease is shown with great candidness in STILL. The documentary, available on Apple TV+, was nominated for seven 2023 Emmy Awards including for Outstanding Documentary.

If you’re a TV+ subscriber, I highly recommend adding STILL to your watchlist. I watched a few months ago and was enthralled by it.