Parkinson’s ON Panel Review

From symptoms to treatment, each person’s Parkinson’s journey is different. The more you understand about your condition and its symptoms, the more you can learn and make informed decisions about your health.

This is the ethos behind Parkinson’s ON, an app that reminds you to take your medication on time, track your symptoms and log your daily activities. The app is created by Kuhan Pushparatnam, co-host of popular podcast 2 Parkies in a Pod. It aims to empower those living with the condition and allow better, more informed and higher quality of care.

Back in 2022, Kuhan conducted an experiment on himself. He measured many aspects of his daily life like how much he exercised, how long he slept for, whether he took his medication on time, how bad his Parkinson’s symptoms were. He analysed the data and discovered that his symptoms were worse when he didn’t take his medication on time. He also learned that, on days when he exercised more, his mood was more positive.

He realised that these insights could be useful for others. He set out to create an app that would allow people living with Parkinson’s to monitor both motor and non-motor symptoms, track medication times, and ultimately, to have a sense of control over their quality of life.

Developed together with his care partner, Kuhan self-funded the first version of Parkinson’s ON and launched his app at the end of 2023.

The app allows you to log in with an email address or with an existing Facebook, Apple or Google account. Once logged in, there are 4 steps to complete the set-up process.

Step 1: The first step is creating a profile. Enter your name, gender and year of Parkinson’s diagnosis.

Step 2: The second step encourages you to select the symptoms you want to track using an easy-to-tap tick-box button. There are 49 Parkinson’s symptoms to choose from, with ‘most common’ at the top of the list. To find out more about each symptom, you tap the large ‘i’ information icon.

Step 3: The third step lets you record the regular medication you take. This can be selected from the pre-filled list or entered manually.

Step 4: The final step is entering when you take your medications and how much you take of each.

This was straightforward for most of our review team, but 2 reviewers mentioned that if you’re taking medication for other conditions, the process is more complicated. One reviewer said: “If you only take Parkinson’s meds this would be easy, but for people with complex conditions this is harder than it should be to set up multiple meds. [Many] people have more than just Parkinson’s meds, it would be better if more of these appeared on the set list so that they didn’t have to be added manually.”

Most of our review team found the instructions and setting up “fairly easy”. One reviewer said they were able to add their medications, timings and symptoms “within ten minutes.”

However, one reviewer got stuck on step 2. They were unable to navigate back or forward within the app and so decided to give up and to not continue using it.

Navigation and usability

The app encourages ‘tapping not typing’ with icons, illustrations and large buttons to help make it as easy to use as possible. One reviewer liked the “very clear picture representation for everything,” and another said the app was “very clear and intuitive.”

A reviewer, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 2 years ago, said they “would have welcomed more text rather than diagrams.” One of our reviewers who states they are “somewhat confident” with technology and who has dexterity problems described the controls as “fiddly”.

Medication reminders

Parkinson’s ON offers a medication scheduling tool. The dynamic scheduler records the time you take your medication and cleverly adjusts the next due times to maintain regular intervals. The app also reminds you to take your medication and encourages you to log when you’ve taken it.

The ‘My Insights’ dashboard within the app gives you a weekly or monthly record of how closely you have followed your doctor’s instructions around timing and dosage of your medication. This is called medication adherence.

The medication reminders divided our review team. A reviewer commented: “I like the notification system for taking meds.” Another added: “It’s increased the likelihood I remember to take my medications.”

However, some found the alerts “annoying”, with one reviewer calling the alert “horrible”. The notification sound is supposed to be a shaking pill bottle, but to them, it sounded like a “rattlesnake”. They recommended that the alerts should be customisable.

Symptom tracking

The app encourages you to log your symptoms throughout the day. For example, if you’re out for a walk and start experiencing some gait issues, you can enter this symptom, when it starts and rate its intensity by tapping on 1 of the 5 emotion indicators (very frowny face to extremely happy face). If you don’t want to, or can’t log the symptom when it’s happening, you can log it later that day.

With the current version of the app, you can see a ‘history’ of the symptoms you’ve recorded and the ratings you gave them. However the app doesn’t yet offer any trends or insights to see how symptoms may have changed over time, nor how they relate to other factors such as your medication adherence. Something, one reviewer said, would be useful. They commented: “I’m looking for an app with more depth. This app is too basic.”

Half of our reviewers were not fans of the symptom tracking feature, with one reviewer finding it “a bit long winded, and after a couple of days I got bored of it.” Another added: “It adds no value to my life or my condition.”

However, one female reviewer who experiences dyskinesia, poor sleep and gait issues was much more positive. She said: “The app has made it much easier to monitor my symptoms.”

Activity log

From napping and exercise to hobbies and work, you can also input your daily activities, log when you did them and rate how you felt about them.

One reviewer didn’t see the relevance of this feature. He said: “There were too many activities to choose from and adding timing was too fiddly. What value does that give me?” Another added that it was “largely irrelevant” and they “simply don’t see the point of it.”

Parkinson’s content

The app also offers a range of self-help content including access to 2 exclusive 2 Parkies in a Pod podcast episodes, guided yoga and meditation series, Parkinson’s facts and tips, and links to useful Parkinson’s UK articles. One reviewer said most of the facts and articles were “quite interesting and informative” but there was one fact about Parkinson’s life expectancy that was “highly demotivating”.

The Parkinson’s ON app is free to download on Apple and Android smartphones, and currently there are no subscriptions or in-app purchases required to use it.

A reviewer who said they would not recommend the app said: “Free is good, but its relevance is poor.”

However, a counter response from a reviewer was: “You can’t say fairer than free. It is well worth the cost of downloading to give it a go.”

A reviewer who particularly liked the medication reminders, said: “It helps me to adhere to my medication and to self manage symptoms. It’s free and very useful.”