WideHealth Seminars with Walter Maetzler, "Digital biomarkers for chronic diseases: Lessons learned"

This podcaste is part of the "WideHealth Seminars". This project (widehealth.eu) has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952279

Speaker: Walter Maetzler 

Title:  Digital biomarkers for chronic diseases: Lessons learned   

Abstract: In recent years, many -wearable- digital devices have conquered the consumer and fitness market, and the medical and health industry also expected an enormous development boost from this advance. However, the results currently available on the detection of disease, its progression and therapy through such digital devices are rather disappointing. The regulatory bodies as well as many clinicians argue that this is mainly due to the fact that the development always starts from the technological, but not from the clinical, or even better, patient level. In this webinar, a large EU research project, IDEA-FAST, will be used as an example to show how informed digital and device-agnostic biomarkers can be developed for quality-of-life-relevant symptoms in various chronic diseases.  

Short Bio: Walter Maetzler is full professor for neurogeriatrics and deputy director of the neurology department of the University Hospital in Kiel, Germany. His main clinical interest is on Parkinson’s disease and other disorders associated with functionally relevant movement and cognitive disabilities. He leads a research group focusing on the analysis and validation of mobile sensor technology in supervised (“lab- or clinic-based”) and unsupervised (“home-based”) assessments. He is involved as principal investigator, chief clinical investigator and workpackage leader in multiple international projects investigating the potential of mobile sensor technology to improve our understanding of disease progression and treatment response in Parkinson’s disease. Examples at a European level are IDEA-FAST, Mobilise-D, Fair-Park II and Keep Control. Currently, he serves as the co-chair of the Technology task force of the Movement Disorders Society.