Neuropathic pain is a difficult condition to treat and would require reliable biomarkers to personalise and optimise treatments. To date, pain levels are mostly measured with subjective scales, but research has shown that electroencephalography (EEG) and heart rate variability (HRV) can be linked to those levels. Internet of Things technology could allow embedding EEG and HRV in easy-to-use systems that patients can use at home in their daily life. We have developed a system for home monitoring that includes a portable EEG device, a tablet application to guide patients through imaginary motor tasks while recording EEG, a wearable HRV sensor and a mobile phone app to report pain levels. We are using this system in a clinical study involving 15 spinal cord injury patients for one month. Preliminary results show that relevant data are being collected, with inter and intra-patients variability for both HRV and pain levels, and that the mobile phone app is perceived as usable, of good quality and useful. However, because of its complexity, the system requires some effort from patients, is sometimes unreliable and the collected EEG signals are not always of the desired quality.

Advancements in technology, such as smartphones and wearabledevices, can be used for collecting movement data through embeddedsensors. This paper focuses on linking Parkinson’s Disease severitywith data collected from mobile phones in the mPower study. As referencefor symptoms’ severity, we use the answers provided to part 2 ofthe standard MDS-UPDRS scale. As input variables, we use the featurescomputed within mPower from the raw data collected during 4 phonebasedactivities: walking, rest, voice and finger tapping. The features arefiltered in order to remove unreliable datapoints and associated to referencevalues. After pre-processing, 5 Machine Learning algorithms areapplied for predictive analysis. We show that, notwithstanding the noisedue to the data being collected in an uncontrolled manner, the regressedsymptom levels are moderately to strongly correlated with the actualvalues (highest Pearson’s correlation = 0.6). However, the high differencebetween the values also implies that the regressed values can not beconsidered as a substitute for a conventional clinical assessment (lowestmean absolute error = 5.4).

We extended the Mobistudy app for clinical research in order to gather data about Parkinson’s motor and non-motor symptoms. We developed 5 tests that make use of the phone’s embedded sensors and 3 questionnaires. We show through data collected by healthy individuals simulating PD symptoms that the tests are able to identify the presence of symptoms.

Internet of Things (IoT) can work as a useful tool for clinical research. We developed a software platform that allows researchers to publish clinical studies and volunteers to participate into them using an app and connected IoT devices. The platform includes a REST API, a web interface for researchers and an app that collects data during tasks volunteers are invited to contribute. Nine tasks have been developed: Forms, Positioning, Finger tapping, Pulse-oximetry, Peak Flow measurement, Activity tracking, Data query, Queen’s College step test and Six-minute walk test. These leverage sensors embedded in the phone, connected Bluetooth devices and additional APIs like HealthKit and Google Fit. Currently, the platform is used in two clinical studies by 25 patients: an asthma management study in the United Kingdom, and a neuropathic pain management study in Spain.