PKG-Watch Helps in Managing Parkinson’s Symptoms and Lowering Patient Costs, Global Kinetics Reports

Global Kinetics recently announced that the use of its wearable device, Personal KinetiGraph ^­­(PKG)-Watch, significantly improves the assessment and management of Parkinson’s disease symptoms, while reducing patients’ costs.

These results were presented in four scientific posters at the International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders, held Oct. 5-9 in Hong Kong.

The PKG-Watch is a wrist-worn device that collects data on a patient’s movement, providing information regarding motor symptoms of Parkinson’s — such as tremor, slow or involuntary movements, motor-skills fluctuations, and immobility — to the patient’s doctor.

The PKG system is now commercialized for clinical use in 17 countries, including the U.S. and several European countries. Earlier this year, the company announced that the PKG-Watch was recommended by two separate expert panels to improve clinical management of Parkinson’s disease.

A previous population study using a database of more than 10,000 Parkinson’s patients worldwide who wore the PKG-Watch showed that this technology had the potential to provide clinicians with a passive and continuous assessment of patients’ symptoms, helping them  to better understand disease progression and to optimize treatments.

The study, “Objective Data in Parkinson’s Disease: A description of over 20,000 Parkinson’s symptom scores across the world using the Personal KinetiGraph (PKG),” showed updated results from that growing database, involving 21,234 PKG-Watch users worldwide from 2012 to 2018.

Data supported previous findings, showing that a substantial proportion of patients have suboptimal management of their motor symptoms, with high levels of slowness of movement, tremors, and daytime immobility.

Among these patients, 54% had uncontrolled but likely treatable slowed movement, and 10% had uncontrolled but likely treatable involuntary movements.

Subsequent use of the PKG-Watch significantly improved patients’ motor symptoms, suggesting that the data collected and provided did help clinicians to optimize treatment and improve motor symptom management.

Similar results were presented in the poster “Personal KinetiGraph™ Movement Recording System: An Assessment of Utility in a Movement Disorder Clinic,” regarding an open-label study that involved 28 Parkinson’s patients wearing the PKG-Watch.

The study also showed that patients reported the device had a positive impact on their care, assessing their daily activity levels (96% of patients), providing data that helped to manage their disease (93%) and they could not otherwise provide to their physician (89%), and explaining symptoms (79%).

Another study, titled “Costs and outcomes for Parkinson’s disease patients who have their management adjusted by Personal KinetiGraph (PKG),” assessed the potential cost savings for 33 Parkinson’s patients in Northern Tasmania, Australia, whose oral therapy was adjusted with guidance from the PKG-Watch.

Better disease management associated with the use of PKG-Watch contributed to an estimated annual cost savings of AU$1,719.42 per patient, results showed.

The study, “Pilot economic evaluation of Personal KinetiGraph (PKG) for management of Parkinson’s disease in Australia,” also supported PKG-Watch use being tied to cost savings.

It showed that even small additional therapeutic benefits associated with PKG-Watch contribute to lesser resource utilization and lower cost, compared to current usual care. The study estimated that PKG-Watch use contributed to an annual savings of AU$962 per patient.

“We are pleased to share this data, as well as having our PKG device be used as an objective measurement tool in the clinical care setting,” John Schellhorn, Global Kinetics’s CEO, said in a press release.

“We are also excited that our PKG smartwatch is being used in multiple clinical studies conducted by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to evaluate potential new therapies,” Schellhorn added.