Michael J. Fox Foundation and IBM reveal new AI model for Parkinson’s disease

Researchers at IBM and the Michael J. Fox Foundation have developed a new artificial intelligence (AU) model to help predict how Parkinson’s disease could progress for individual patients.

In 2018,  IBM and the Michael J. Fox Foundation teamed up to apply machine learning to advance understanding of Parkinson’s disease and its causes.

The researchers used machine learning algorithms to identify patterns in Parkinson’s disease patients, using data gathered over up to seven years.

This lead to a AI model that can help to predict the progression of symptoms in not only timing but also severity by learning from longitudinal patient data.

Researchers identified eight Parkinson’s disease states which manifest differently in terms of motor and non-motor symptoms and their progression, with seven outcomes associated with terminal Parkinson’s disease.

The results also suggest that a patient’s state can change among several factors, including the ability to perform activities in daily living, issues around slowness of movement, tremor and postural instability and non-motor symptoms.

The researchers said the results support the hypothesis of ‘diverse progression pathways’, after they observed many disease trajectories.

Still, they maintained that the AI model can make accurate predictions, highlighting that the model was able to successfully predict an advanced state of Parkinson’s disease associated with outcomes such as dementia and the inability to walk unassisted using one dataset.

Looking to the future, the researchers are aiming to further refine the model to provide additional granular characterisation of disease states by including emerging biomarker assessments.

Data was collected from the Michael J. Fox Foundation’s Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI), first launched in 2010 in partnership with over 30 companies operating in the biotech, pharma, non-profit and private sectors.

The Michael J. Fox Foundation was launched in 2000 by actor Michael J. Fox, after he was diagnosed with the condition in the 1990s.

It aims to help advance the search for treatments and a cure for Parkinson’s disease, which is believed to affect over six million people globally according to the Foundation.