Dundee Research Interest Group

Werner, DRIG's former secretary and founding member, is still working very hard for PwPs and has set up this new group for those with an interest and a special skill in technologies which can help PwPs, read more about it below and on our News page.  This will also be the subject of this year's planned DRIG autumn "virtual conference" event.

'You should take your medicine now.'

How new technologies can help in the fight against Parkinson's

After the  euphoria about the potential of possibilities that seemed to be achievable through the techniques of artificial intelligence (AI), things went very quiet again at the beginning of the 1990s. Too many promises could not be kept and the few successful missions would probably have been just as feasible with conventional techniques. AI and its sub-areas seemed to be on the way to insignificance - an aberration of the software evolution.

A few decades later - and it seems to be a completely new world: techniques that were believed to be dead open up new fields of application, even entire industries. Google's success is largely due to its mastery of large amounts of data. Image and voice processing are used in such high quality in every smartphone that they can even be used for identification purposes. And - the 'knowledge and skills' of these machines are not fixed, but machine learning techniques enable them to learn from experience and even question existing knowledge and correct it if necessary.

This has solved previous problems:

• The techniques are available, stable and so inexpensive that they can be used everywhere.
• The required computing power is available in every smartphone.

The main thing now is to use these technologies as effectively as possible. For us as Parkinson's patients there are many possibilities, such as:

• supporting the treatment of the disease through measures that take into account the current personal situation;
• practical help in coping with the problems of daily life;
• getting an early and reliable diagnosis and subsequent treatment;
• and, potentially, many more…

The field is so rich in possibilities that we decided to create a group dedicated to this topic: The 'Special Interest Group on Parkinson's and Technology'. We will monitor the market for 'intelligent solutions' for Parkinson's, evaluate applications and give concrete advice.  At the same time, we will act as PwP's mouthpiece to Research and Industry and provide impetus for new solutions. And we will try to make the acquired knowledge available in an understandable way.

One means of this knowledge transfer is through events. We will be holding the first of these this autumn in conjunction with DRIG. We will be organising it virtually and test new forms of interaction.

If you are interested in this topic, please complete this form and return it as soon as possible.

Werner Remmele, SIGP@T

Marc van Grieken, DRIG