The Pulse, April 2019
The Pulse — Improving Parkinson’s Care 💪
How can it be that April has passed already?! Time seems to just escape us as we work towards creating a product that actually works for people with Parkinson’s!
Parkinson’s Awareness Month 🧠
April was Parkinson’s awareness month and we saw so many cool campaigns and contributions from the community.
One of our favourites was the ‘Parkinson’s Is’ campaign from Parkinsons UK. It casts light on the diverse nature of Parkinson’s, building awareness through this well-curated video.
The stats that accompany the video are pretty eye-opening for those who aren’t familiar with Parkinson’s which is super effective in driving awareness.
2 people are diagnosed with Parkinson’s every hour.
Parkinson’s has over 40 possible symptoms.
87% of people with Parkinson’s have faced harassment and discrimination.
Building a stronger awareness of Parkinson’s helps in developing better community support for research efforts and trials. At a more individual level, it is key in improving understanding and crucially, changing attitudes towards people with Parkinson’s. We want more people to understand life with Parkinson’s disease.
A New Team Member 🎉
We recently welcomed our latest new joiner, this time to the data team — Hannah Woodbridge!
Hannah will be working on turning raw data into useful insights from which people can take action. That includes developing algorithms, working with motion data and giving medical significance to the information gathered. Interesting stuff! You can get to know her a bit by checking out the mini-interview here.
New App Sneak Peek 👀
Designing the app is an iterative process that requires a deep understanding of user needs. Milena has been leading the work of translating these needs into a product. As always, we want to keep you up-to-date with how the process is going. Take a look at some of these screens from the upcoming version of the app! The following weeks will involve testing these with users.
Wearable Update ⌚️
Off the back of our research, we made some changes to the watch with the goal of improving the usability and effectiveness of the product.
Induction Charging 🔋
We spent a lot of time thinking about how the wearable device would charge. We have seen first hand that plugging in a small USB-C into a phone can be difficult for someone with Parkinson’s. It also came up several times as a pain-point in our user research. So we decided to build-in an induction coil for wireless induction charging. This makes things a lot easier to use when the watch needs charging!
Vibration Motor ⚡️
A more prominent gripe for many people with Parkinson’s was remembering to take their medication on time. Notifications were the obvious answer but we discovered that some people don’t check their mobile notifications as much as we do. So, in addition to medication reminder through the app, we figured that we should build in a vibration motor that will go off reminding you when it’s time to take your medication.
Growing… 🚀
So back in February, we mentioned that we upgraded our tech through buying a VICON motion capture system. Well as it turns out, a growing team and an in-house R&D facility need more space. Quite a bit more.
Well, we have now moved to a new office!
We are now based at Factory Berlin in Mitte which is right here. Aside from the need for space, we chose Factory Berlin as we were drawn by their energetic and supportive coworking community. We’re excited to meet some talented individuals and perhaps some people that can help us on our mission to improve Parkinson’s care. Check out some of the pics! 👇👇👇
Get on the Waiting List 🤳
You can get notified when the product is available by signing up to our waiting list. The list is growing which is super motivating for the team!
👉👉👉 Sign up here! 👈👈👈
We will send you the very occasional update on our progress to just keep you in the loop. 😉
