SHBC1045

L.H.CHUNG¹, Y.Q. CHUA¹, S.Y. CHOONG², H.W. HO², J.Y. VOON²

Tan Tock Seng Hospital¹, Singapore Institute of Technology²

The Timed-up-and-go (TUG) test is a commonly used mobilty measure for Parkinson’s disease (PD). The objectives of the study were to create and test a smartphone application that enables self-administration of TUG test, under both normal and dual-task conditions.

With the phone strapped onto the wrist of the user, a timer was activated when the user pressed start on the smartphone and deactivated automatically once the user completed the TUG by sitting back down on the chair. For dual-task TUG, users were to count the frequency of even numbers being called out from a random presentation of numbers played from the application when performing TUG. 10 healthy controls and 10 persons with PD (PwP) completed 3 trials of TUG and dual-task TUG. Validity was evaluated by comparing the average timing derived from the application and by stopwatch, using correlations and Bland-Altman plots.

TUG performance derived from the application and stopwatch were highly correlated in both healthy individuals (P<0.001, r=0.90) and PwP (P=0.002, r=0.85). Time taken to complete dual-task TUG obtained by the application had a high correlation with stopwatch measurement in PwP (P<0.001, r=0.97). There is a moderate correlation between dual-task TUG timings derived from the application and stopwatch in healthy individuals (P= 0.098, r= 0.552).

The smartphone-based application we created enabled valid assessments of TUG and dual-task TUG and it is feasible for PwP to self-administer the test.  Additional work is warranted to explore the feasibility of the application to be used in home settings.