Sensor device for testing activities in Parkinson and ALS patients

The diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases has become a key point in nowadays European healthcare system. However, the underlying testing and monitorization processes haven't experienced the innovation and advancement required to fulfill the needs that such diagnosis and treatment present. In this paper we propose a new testing device for Parkinson Disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients. The device is designed to carry out two of the most used tests for these patients: the finger-tapping test and the hand-grip strength test. The designed system has been divided in three main blocks, which have been implemented and tested: a sensorized glove, equipped with Force Sensitive Resistors (FSR), a tiny hardware device which gathers the data and a PC application, which presents the results to the doctors. This work is part funded by the ICT programme of the European Commission (PERFORM Project: FP7-ICT-2007-1-215952).