idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
Nachrichten, Termine, Experten
idw - Informationsdienst
Wissenschaft
Deutsches Zentrum für Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases) and Aparito (a Welsh and Dutch based med-tech company) today announce their collaboration agreement to co-develop a means for patients to record their own severity of ataxia by using a simplified and shorter SARA version in a video-recordable manner at home.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Klockgether, Director of Clinical Research at the DZNE, was instrumental in the development of the Scale for the Assessment and Rating of Ataxia (SARA) scale as a reliable and valid scale to measure the severity of ataxia, tested in 5 trials including >600 patients with ataxias. It includes eight different domains to measure gait, stance, nose-finger test, finger chase, hand movement and speech which is assessed by clinicians within in the hospital.
The DZNE has transferred the SARA into a disease score used by patients outside of hospital settings (“SARAhome”). It includes a reduced number of domains and follows a standardised order and video instruction guide for patients to follow.
Benefit of the collaboration
The collaboration is about the development and further assessment of a new app displaying the SARAhome scale within Aparito’s flagship software platform Atom5™. This way SARAhome is made available to patients on iOS and Android and is currently available in English, German, Dutch and Portuguese. Throughout the cooperation It will be rolled out in multiple study sites in Europe, including the DZNE in Bonn, and Melbourne Australia over the coming months.
A main benefit of the SARAhome app is that it enables a close monitoring of Ataxia symptoms within a significantly brief period of time: Ataxia symptoms can be highly variable within a single day, from day-to-day and week to week. Travel to clinical sites can be stressful and time consuming for patients, also impacting on a patient’s performance while being assessed and often leading to missed insight of disease variability.
A recent publication by Dr Marcus Grobe-Einsler et al (2020) in the Journal Movement Disorders demonstrated the validity and feasibility of SARAhome. First data from home application suggests that fluctuations in severity of ataxia exceed the expected range.
Dr Elin Haf Davies, Aparito CEO stated, “We are highly honoured to enter into this collaborative agreement with DZNE. They are highly regarded for their clinical and academic credibility and we very much look forward to extending the availability of SARAhome to patients globally.”
Prof Dr Thomas Klockgether: “Our Collaboration with Aparito resulted in the development of a new assessment tool that will be of enormous relevance for future trials and patient care.”
Development of SARAhome, a New Video‐Based Tool for the Assessment of Ataxia at Home.
Marcus Grobe‐Einsler et al., Mov Disord (2021)
DOI: 10.1002/mds.28478
URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/mds.28478
https://www.dzne.de/aktuelles/pressemitteilungen/presse/dzne-und-aparito-entwick... German version
Criteria of this press release:
Journalists, Scientists and scholars
Medicine
transregional, national
Cooperation agreements, Research results
English
You can combine search terms with and, or and/or not, e.g. Philo not logy.
You can use brackets to separate combinations from each other, e.g. (Philo not logy) or (Psycho and logy).
Coherent groups of words will be located as complete phrases if you put them into quotation marks, e.g. “Federal Republic of Germany”.
You can also use the advanced search without entering search terms. It will then follow the criteria you have selected (e.g. country or subject area).
If you have not selected any criteria in a given category, the entire category will be searched (e.g. all subject areas or all countries).
