Patient Programmer

2019: Announcement

At the end of October, 2019 Medtronic also Samsung showed the application for smartphones Galaxy under the name Patient Programmer which allows patients to manage independently therapy at Parkinson's disease.

Medtronic cooperated many years with doctors to help to develop technology of deep stimulation of a brain (DBS) for decrease in expressiveness of symptoms of a disease. The DBS system includes implantation of a neurostimulator which sends electric impulses to a certain part of a brain.

Medtronic and Samsung showed the application for the Galaxy smartphones which allows patients to manage therapy independently.

Regulating force and frequency of these impulses, doctors can optimize the development of hormones broken at patients with Parkinson's disease and by that to reduce expressiveness of the most unpleasant symptoms - a shiver in hands, violations of gait, constraint. To help clinical physicians and patients to optimize therapy, Medtronic decided to develop the application for setup of implants of DBS.

The application developed since 2018 is intended for doctors and patients and can be used on the Samsung smartphones which are connected to a DBS system communicator through Bluetooth. All transmitted data are ciphered for privacy protection of the patient. The application allows the patient to adjust independently the therapy of DBS appointed by the doctor between consultations.

It is known that DBS therapy significantly improves quality of life of patients with Parkinson's disease. Medtronic hopes that the new application will allow patients to find bigger control over own life, and the data meanwhile collected by the application will be used for further developments and researches. The company expresses hope that new information will allow doctors to optimize treatment depending on individual characteristics of the patient.^[1]

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