Goals of the project
The project aims to improve the individual treatment of patients with activating therapies. This will ensure access to highly qualified care regardless of where patients live.
About the project
The Parkinson AKTIV project brings together various professional stakeholders in the care of the Parkinson disease and builds standardised communication tools for improving the therapy outcomes.
With the Parkinson disease being the second most common neurodegenerative medical condition, its diagnosis and therapy is manifold. Medical personnel, including neurologists and different types of therapists, have to work together closely to increase the therapy outcome and the patients’ quality of life.
The Parkinson AKTIV project connects these stakeholders on a geographically centred network in the Münsterland region in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, and allows them to collaborate on a patient-focused therapy case basis.
Patients are actively involved on the platform, too, allowing them to maintain data sovereignty over their personal data and to strengthen the connection of network partners.
More than 300,000 people suffer from Parkinson’s disease, the most common neurodegenerative movement disorder in Germany. Due to dying nerve cells in a specific area of the brain, the movements of those affected initially become slower and stiffer. Trembling of the arms and legs is also typical. In addition, gait, speech and swallowing disorders may occur. Other symptoms can include bladder disorders or cognitive impairments, even dementia. Parkinson’s cannot be cured, but it can be positively influenced with the help of medication and an activating therapy consisting of physiotherapy, occupational therapy and/or speech therapy. So far, however, only one third of all Parkinson’s patients receive specific activating therapy.
In this project, a web-based communication platform is to be established for optimized exchange between the service providers involved in order to enable individually tailored treatment that takes activating therapy into account. With the help of quickcards, the exchange between the various professional groups is to be improved. The quickcards contain patient-relevant information and guideline-based therapy recommendations and are made available to all treatment providers. This communication platform will be linked to the existing multidisciplinary Parkinson’s network Münsterland+, in which a large number of experts are already networked.
The study will compare the quality of life of Parkinson’s patients treated with the help of the web-based communication platform and with increased use of activating therapies with a control group that remains in regular care. The project will be funded for 48 months with approximately 2.6 million euros.
