Applications and wearables for disease monitoring

The recent development of Mobile Health Technologies (MHT) could enable the monitoring of different components of movement disorders in supervised and unsupervized conditions. General mobility, gait, balance and abnormal movements—such as tremor or chorea—could be objectively assessed during specific tasks or at home using wearable devices, mobile applications or other noninvasive technologies. This assessment could also enable the evaluation of sleep, autonomic function and cognitive/behavioral alterations. The digital assessment has been widely applied in Parkinson's disease but experiences in atypical parkinsonism, Huntington's disease and essential tremor are growing. The MHT assessment is generally well tolerated even in the home environment and has been used as secondary outcome for pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. Further studies using multimodal devices are ongoing to evaluate the applicability of such technologies in large populations and the feasibility of larger use of technology in daily routine.