As part of a late-onset GM2 gangliosidosis natural history study, digital health technology was utilised to monitor a group of patients remotely between hospital visits. This approach was explored as a means of capturing continuous data and moving away from focusing only on episodic data captured in traditional study designs. A strong emphasis was placed on real-time capture of symptoms and mobile Patient-Reported Outcomes (mPROs) to identify the disease impact important to the patients themselves; an impact that may not always correlate with the measured clinical outcomes assessed during patient visits. This was supported by passive, continuous data capture from a wearable device.
The study demonstrated that patients were very enthusiastic and motivated to engage with the technology as demonstrated by excellent compliance. The combination of mPROs and wearables generates feature-rich datasets that could be a useful and feasible way to capture remote, real-time insight into disease burden.