Mobile Applications for People with Parkinson's Disease: A Systematic Search in App Stores and Content Review

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the most common age-related neurodegenerative motor disease. People with Parkinson’s have different motor symptoms related to movement, the most common of which are tremor, muscle rigidity and slowness of movement. In addition, there are other problems that are unrelated to motor symptoms, such as sleep behavior disorders, personality changes, pain and depression. Numerous apps designed for people with this disease have been developed in recent years. Due to the diversity of symptoms, there are very many different apps. Our goal is to carry out a systematic review of available apps related to PD for the operating systems iOS and Android and to assess their features. In addition, we are interested in the usability of the apps. A search for the representative terms “Parkinson” and “Parkinson’s Disease”, together with the descriptors of the symptoms, was conducted in the Google Play and Apple App stores. Next, we screened the PD-related apps. Finally, we assessed the apps with respect to symptoms, users, purpose and features. In addition, a usability evaluation was carried out.