The technology allows objective measurement of symptoms of Parkinson’s disease
August 14, 2017 – Melbourne, Australia and Minneapolis, Minn. – Global Kinetics Corporation (GKC), a digital health company revolutionizing the management of Parkinson’s disease, announced today it has recently received Notice of Allowance for U.S. patent application 12/997540, protecting the company’s lead product, the Personal KinetiGraph™ (PKG™) (Parkinson’s Kinetigraph™ outside of the U.S.) system, which the company is marketing in the U.S. The patent application pertains to the objective measurement of bradykinesia. Bradykinesia, or slowness of movement, is one of the most common symptoms, and a defining feature, of Parkinson’s disease. The capacity to continuously measure this movement symptom underpins the PKG system.
“The allowance of this application supports GKC’s continued progress in the commercialization of our novel, U.S. FDA-cleared PKG system, which is being used to support the management of Parkinson’s disease in over 215 clinics in 16 countries around the world,” said GKC’s global head of business development and legal affairs, Michelle Goldsmith. “We are aggressively pursuing clinical and commercial milestones that will ultimately enable us to make measurable change in the lives of people with Parkinson’s.”
The PKG system, developed by Professor Malcolm Horne and Dr. Rob Griffiths following many years of research at Melbourne’s Howard Florey Institute and Monash University, incorporates a patient-friendly wrist-worn device to record body movements over several days as people go about their daily lives. The PKG system is the only commercially available mobile health technology which provides clinically meaningful measurement of the key symptoms of Parkinson’s using cloud-based proprietary algorithms that measure bradykinesia, dyskinesia, tremor, and the relationships of these to medication timing, sleep and exercise.
Inaccurate assessment of Parkinson’s symptoms may result in patients experiencing uncontrolled symptoms, reducing their quality of life and increasing healthcare costs. By adding the PKG system into a patient’s routine care, treating clinicians now have an effective tool that assists them to augment their clinical assessment with GKC’s proprietary objective data, captured by the PKG watch over seven days.
“GKC has long held the view that measurement is key to optimal management in Parkinson’s. Our algorithms underpin GKC’s ability to provide clinically meaningful and actionable information about Parkinson’s symptoms to clinicians,” explained Professor Horne, GKC’s co-founder and chief scientific officer.
The results of a recent study show the PKG system detected 85% of Parkinson’s patients previously considered “controlled” by their treating physician were, in fact, uncontrolled and experiencing treatable symptoms. The study also showed that without the PKG, one third of the patients that the PKG system detected as having treatable symptoms would have been missed by expert movement disorder specialists (MDS).1 When patients, who were classified as uncontrolled, were treated per their physicians’ recommendations, their outcomes improved, including the subgroup where only the PKG, not the MDS, detected the need for treatment changes.1
GKC is currently conducting studies to establish the value of the PKG system in improving the entire advanced therapy pathway from more efficient referrals to better optimization on therapy. Early evidence suggests the PKG may enhance the DBS pathway, this research is ongoing.2
About Global Kinetics Corporation (GKC) and the Parkinson’s KinetiGraphTM System (PKGTM)
GKC, recognized as a Top 10 Most Innovative Health Company by the Fast Company Awards 2017, is a commercial-stage digital health company revolutionizing the management of Parkinson’s.
The company’s PKG System is a patient-friendly, algorithm-based system that records body movements and other symptoms over the course of many days and creates data-driven reports that empower more personalized treatment and management decisions—with the goal of leading to a higher quality of life for patients.
The PKG System continues to be accepted as a first line clinical system and is the only FDA-cleared and clinically validated digital health technology that can provide continuous and objective measurement of patients’ symptoms in everyday environments. This includes the continuous and objective measure of bradykinesia (or slowness of movement), the most clinically important symptom of Parkinson’s disease.
In addition to increased use in routine clinical care for Parkinson’s disease, Global Kinetics continues to pursue partnerships with major pharmaceutical and medical technology to help measure the efficacy of new and advanced therapies, as well as use in clinical trials, telehealth, remote monitoring and other augmented platform opportunities. For more information, visit: www.globalkineticscorporation.com.
1. Kotschet, Farzanehfar, Michelle Braybrook, Mal Horne. Objective Measurement in Clinical Care of Patients with Parkinson’s disease: an RCT using the PKG. Presented at International MDS Conference Vancouver June 2017.
2. M. Horne, J. Volkmann, C. Sannelli, P.-P. Luyet, E. Moro. An Evaluation of the Parkinson’s Kinetigraph (PKG) as a Tool to Support Deep Brain Stimulation Eligibility Assessment in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease [abstract]. Mov Disord. 2017; 32 (suppl 2).
