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IT support: "digital doctor" will monitor people with dangerous neurological disease
Russia has created the world's first digital tool capable of changing the lives of patients with one of the most severe neurological diagnoses. The new mobile solution allows real—time monitoring of the course of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a rare incurable disease in which motor neurons die, causing muscle weakness, atrophy, paralysis and respiratory failure. Doctors interviewed by Izvestia believe that such decisions are necessary.: They can make life easier for both doctors and patients and their loved ones.
What is the danger of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis?
The Sechenov University Clinic of Nervous Diseases has developed a mobile application for monitoring patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It helps to track the dynamics of a person's condition through their clinical indicators, and the digital "assistant" finds control points for the deterioration of the patient's condition in order to provide timely assistance. Clinicians are confident that the application is in demand — there are no analogues of such a product either in Russia or in the world.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis is a progressive, incurable degenerative disease of the central nervous system. It destroys motor neurons, which leads to muscle paralysis, atrophy, speech disorders, swallowing and breathing. Patients with ALS have limited mobility, they cannot visit the clinic often, so doctors talked about the need for a tool for remote monitoring of their condition from home.
— ALS is a fatal disease, the patient's condition can worsen at any moment. The mobile application is the most suitable resource to monitor the patient's clinical indicators in real time and, if necessary, help him in time. In the ALS (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis) application, you can evaluate many parameters: the walking tracker, the degree of speech impairment, muscle strength in individual groups, the quality of food and its calorie content are one of the most important indicators, as people with ALS gradually lose their appetite and stop eating. Both the patient and his relatives can work with the application," Dmitry Druzhinin, professor of the Department of Nervous Diseases at Sechenov University, told Izvestia.
So, you need to fill out a food diary every day, and the app itself will remind you about the rest of the indicators, and it will also tell you that the information should be sent to the doctor. According to the specialist, the development compares the data obtained for different periods and evaluates the progression of the disease. The digital assistant draws attention to the most threatening indicators for the patient's health and asks them to be added to the application more often than others.
— Thanks to the mobile application, the doctor sees a digital impression of the disease. Unfortunately, ALS is an incurable disease, it proceeds in different ways: sometimes for six months, sometimes for five or ten years. Therefore, monitoring a person's condition over time makes it possible to predict life expectancy, and such data is extremely important for clinicians," Dmitry Druzhinin said.
In addition, the app will help neurologists to get answers to controversial questions related to the clinical picture of ALS. For example, how sports, smoking, and concomitant diseases affect the course of the disease.
— Some data will be more important, some less. Perhaps, based on the study of certain indicators, new recommendations for the management of ALS patients will be formed," the professor believes.
Sechenov University clinicians plan to expand the sample of patients who will use the app. They hope to get a digital profile of the disease in different regions of Russia.: how the disease proceeds, the life expectancy of patients in relation to geographical locations. It is also planned to create a database of trusted doctors in each of the regions.
— Our global goal is to digitally monitor this nosology in order to help and prolong the lives of ALS patients. We do not plan to go beyond the scope of medical competencies — we have a goal — to try to control the dynamics of only vital signs to prolong the patient's life. No other data is being collected," Dmitry Druzhinin emphasized.
An urgent need of modern medicine
The idea of a digital companion for ALS patients is not just a technological trend, but an urgent need for modern medicine. Its value goes far beyond a specific diagnosis, Olga Valaeva, head of the Virtual Clinic Research and Practice Center at the Moscow Institute of Psychoanalysis, told Izvestia. Such solutions open up a new space in helping patients with severe neurodegenerative diseases, where the psychological state becomes a critical factor influencing the course of the disease.
— This application performs two key functions — medical monitoring and forecasting. It translates the patient's subjective feelings into objective and continuous data, which helps doctors more accurately monitor the dynamics of the condition and even predict possible deterioration. It's also a psychological radar. This, in my opinion as a clinical psychologist, is the most revolutionary aspect. Decreased physical activity, appetite, and changes in communication patterns in the app can all serve as early markers of increased fear, anxiety, and depression. These conditions are not just a concomitant background — they directly affect the course of the disease," the specialist said.
This approach is in great demand for other diseases, the specialist noted. For example, for teenagers with Duchenne myodystrphy, such an app would be a breakthrough.
— This decision is very important for both patients and their family members. In fact, an artificial intelligence data aggregator that processes the external contour of information about the medical community and the internal contour of diagnostic data of a person with such a severe and unpredictable disease as ALS can be considered innovative. Collecting statistics in combination with spatial and climatic conditions will allow us to saturate the database for further work on countering ALS," said Dmitry Lapin, head of the NTI Neuronet Infrastructure Center.
According to Maria Vedunova, director of the UNN Institute of Biology and Biomedicine, if the application collects data using automatic sensors, the development will receive high diagnostic significance.
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