At age 50, in 2012, I froze whilst sitting at my desk and typing into my computer…
I immediately knew something was seriously wrong.
It took another year before I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, the ‘young onset’ variety.
By 2018, I had reached the end of my medication journey with side-effects as bad as or worse than the symptoms.
A DBS brain implant in June 2018, gave me a renewed lease of life and the energy to try and tackle a serious issue – the fact that there is not enough data …
Because PD is a slow-moving condition, a typical patient sees his/her doctor maybe three times a year.
There are no tests as such, so the doctor spends a few moments observing the patient and proceeds to update the prescription.
Very little if any of this – other than the prescription – gets recorded.
I have a background in banking technology and I had my first real encounter with AI – apart from the theory as part of my BSc Computer Science – when I had exploratory discussions with a company called Neural Technologies about 20 years ago. They were pioneers in credit scoring using a neural net. That encounter taught me one thing – for AI to work you need lots of data …
Fast forward to 2019 and I have been invited to present a ‘poster’ at the World Parkinson Congress in Kyoto, Japan, later this year.
I will be outlining a proposal on how to systematically collect both structured and unstructured data from observing Parkinson’s patients and then derive Actionable Insights to help the patient together with a neurologist manage his/her condition better and give the scientific community a way to fast-track research using AI…
If you feel you can contribute, join my multi-disciplinary team of patients, carers, neurologists, neurosurgeons, professors of mathematics, senior technologists and specialist engineers.
I have offered the WPC organisers to demonstrate what is possible …
See you in Kyoto
#wpc2019