With a view of gathering mHealth data through a wearable from over 800 people with Parkinson’s disease, a project has been unveiled by the Michael J Fox Foundation which has been doing pioneering work in Parkinson’s disease.

The Foundation will be arming patients with the Verily Study Watch, in a partnership with Verily Life Sciences, a digital health company. Described as a multi-sensor wearable device, the Watch is designed to passively collect physiologic and environmental data and measure it on a continuous basis. An initiative of the foundation’s Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, the two-year project is a key endeavor of an eight year old effort for delving into the finer nuances of the disease and formulating advanced treatment and care management strategies. A study program analyzes participants for 5 to 13 years in the program through a coordination exercise monitored through 33 clinical sites around the world.

It has been a long-held view by Parkinson’s researchers that sensor-enabled wearable technology like mHealth is a key tool in undertaking an in-depth study of the disease for facilitating of real-time data collection from patients passively as they undergo their daily routine. The data contains crucial information like patient movement, atmospheric information and physiologic information that may have an impact on the disease.