Intel Corporation and Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) for Parkinson’s Research partnered in a new initiative that is geared toward improving the treatment and research of Parkinson’s disease, considered a prevalent neurodegenerative brain ailment second to Alzheimer’s.

The initiative is said to be a significant step in allowing physicians and researchers alike to gauge the development of Parkinson’s and to fast track progress toward improvements in drug development. It also comprises a multiphase research study through the use of a fresh vast data analytics platform for spotting participant data patterns, which are gathered from wearable devices or technologies that monitor symptoms.

MJFF CEO Todd Sherer, PhD, said in a statement that they still measure the disease essentially in the same way physicians did when Dr. James Parkinson first described it in 1817, so he has high hopes for the use of new technologies to this endeavor.

"Data science and wearable computing hold the potential to transform our ability to capture and objectively measure patients' actual experience of disease, with unprecedented implications for Parkinson's drug development, diagnosis and treatment,” said Sherer.

Meanwhile, Diane Bryant, a general manager and senior VP at Data Center Group of Intel, also said in a statement that the unpredictability of Parkinson’s brings about new challenges for experts in monitoring the development of the prevalent disease. With the new technologies, however, new paradigm can be created to measure the disease because more data will be made available to the physicians and researchers.

Part of the collaboration, Intel and MJFF conducted an earlier study to assess the accuracy and usability of these wearable devices in tracking the approved physiological features of participants and the use of a large data analytics platform for gathering and examining data. Participants were 16 patients with Parkinson’s as well as nine control volunteers, both who sported the wearables during two visits to the clinic and at their homes continuously for four days.

One of the participants, 46-year-old Bret Parker from New York, admitted that while doctors advise patients to monitor their disease, he wasn’t compliant at all times.

“The wearables did that monitoring for me in a way I didn't even notice, and the study allowed me to take an active role in the process for developing a cure," Parker said in a statement.

Part of the next phase of such study, MJFF and Intel also plan to roll out later in 2014 a new application for mobile devices that will allow patients to tell their intake of medicines and their current emotion, so as to help medical researchers study the consequences of their medicines on motor symptoms through the detected changes in sensor data coming from these wearable devices.