A smartphone based wearable system for monitoring of Parkinson's patients

Parkinson's Disease is a very common neurodegenerative disease. Most Parkinson's patients suffer from impaired motor skills that affect their quality of life, such as tremor at rest, rigidity, Bradykinesia, and postural instability. Wearable Health Monitoring Systems can help the patients to objectively assess their state and the progress of the disease. This thesis presents a smartphone based wearable system for the monitoring of Parkinson's patients. The system features a Smart Sole sensor to monitor gait and an Android smartphone application for assessment of hand tremor. The Smart Sole sensor processes and sends information from force sensors placed in the shoe insole to a smartphone using a Bluetooth Low Energy microcontroller module. The collected data is used to assess the gait of users. The Android application uses a smartphone's built-in sensors to assess and quantify the hand tremor of users throughout the day. The thesis presents system implementation and its experimental validation.