PD Buddy Panel Review
Review updated:
PD Buddy is an all-in-one app that lets you track Parkinson’s symptoms, set medication reminders, join group chats and get instant help from AI. Our reviewers liked being able to track symptoms and medication, but found the medication alerts to be inconsistent.
Highs
- Ability to track symptoms and mood is helpful
- Social Groups let you chat with other people with Parkinson’s
- AI feature ParkiBot provides instant access to useful information
- Free to use
Lows
- Medication reminder notifications were inconsistent for some
- Customer service did not resolve issues for two reviewers
Meet our Review Panel
The four reviewers in our panel were asked to test out PD Buddy for four weeks before sharing their feedback with us.
Symptoms: Our reviewers are living with a wide range of Parkinson’s symptoms, including dyskinesia, fatigue, loss of smell, rigidity, stiffness and tremors.
Tech confidence rating: Ranges from ‘somewhat unconfident’ to ‘very confident’.
Location: Bristol, Clackmannanshire, Durham and Staffordshire.
Gender
- Men: 3
- Women: 1
Age range
Years since diagnosis
Background
Beatrice Zatorsks began developing PD Buddy in 2023, three years after her husband Michel was diagnosed with Parkinson’s. Michel was told that his condition would decline significantly after five years, prompting the couple to do their own research into lifestyle changes that could improve his prognosis and delay the decline.
The idea behind PD Buddy was to digitise Beatrice and Michel’s approach, bringing together all of the data, tips and community that can help people to make the right lifestyle changes.
Key features include symptom tracking, medication reminders and social groups where you can meet other people with Parkinson’s online and in your local area. The app also provides information around lifestyle changes, including nutrition and stress reduction, as well as physical, vocal and brain exercises. Soon, you’ll be able to share data directly with your clinical team and interact with more experts in the app.
“My vision is to shift the narrative from passive decline to active management,” Beatrice told the Tech Guide.
“I am not just building an app; I am building the tool I wish we had the day my husband was diagnosed. We want to prove that with the right data, lifestyle changes, and community, you can maintain your quality of life far beyond the standard prognosis.”
First impressions
Getting started
When you first open PD Buddy, the app introduces its main features with a short description of each. You’re then asked to register some personal details, including your email address and a password.
The next step is to create your personalised routine by tapping the ‘Create My Routine’ button on the homepage, or by heading to the ‘Routine’ tab at the bottom of the screen.
My Routine lets you plan out the ways you manage your Parkinson’s, including:
- Physical exercises
- Meditation techniques
- Brain exercises
- Vocal exercises
- Nutrition
- Alternative therapies
- Mental health techniques
Setting it up
Most of our reviewers found PD Buddy easy to set up and navigate, with one 64-year-old calling the navigation “consistent”.
Another person, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 12 years ago, said: “The app is clearly laid out and everything is easy to find … no instructions were shown, but none were needed.”
The app is clearly laid out and everything is easy to find
Not everyone agreed with this. One reviewer found the instructions “not straightforward or user-friendly” and needed their husband to help set up their account.
They thought the app could have been easier to navigate and found it didn’t “flow” as they expected. For example, they couldn’t return to a previous post and edit it to include more information. However, they did say that they found the app “fairly easy” to use once set up.
Accessibility
A reviewer with dyslexia said they had no problem reading the text in the app and that the font was “big enough to read.”
The font is big enough to read.
Another user found the font size too big.
“Everything was a bit large on my device’s screen which meant that a lot of scrolling was required when reading pages in the app,” they said. This was especially apparent when they scrolled through longer pages, such as the message boards.
We reached out to PD Buddy’s support team and were told they plan to add accessibility features to the app in the future, including the ability to change the size of the font with your phone’s font settings.
Another reviewer said the text appeared “jumbled” on their screen when their phone was held vertically, but was fine when the phone was horizontal. This issue wasn’t reported by anyone else on our review panel.
Contacting customer service
One reviewer wanted clearer instructions on how to contact support through the web or over the phone, rather than using the app’s customer service chat.
It took this person “several hours” to set up the app as they struggled to find support for an error in the symptom tracker that prevented it from saving an entry.
“I couldn’t find anyone to get help from, and the chat didn’t work,” they said. “Having an email address or telephone number somewhere on the app would have been helpful.”
Another reviewer contacted support after they received no medication reminders on their phone. “The response I received was very pleasant and helpful, although I have not been able to resolve this yet.”
We asked a question in the customer service chat and received a response about 25 minutes later.
Daily use
PD Buddy includes a wide range of features to help you manage your Parkinson’s day-to-day. This includes:
- My Routine
- Social Groups
- PD World
- Pill reminders
- ParkiBot
My Routine
My Routine lets you create a daily routine to manage your condition. This can include physical, brain and vocal exercises, among other things. There’s also a competitive aspect, with each task you complete earning you points. The more points you have, the higher your chances are of making it onto the PD Buddy Points Leaderboard.
One reviewer, who was diagnosed last year, thought My Routine was a “good idea”. They added weights, walking and Tai Chi to their routine.
Another reviewer, who feels “somewhat unconfident” using technology, found setting up My Routine to be difficult.
Our youngest reviewer was a 45-year-old who deals with rigidity and dyskinesia that affects their walking. They were mostly interested in tracking physical exercise in their routine, but had mixed feelings about the competitive nature of the leaderboard system.
It’s close to going against the very good advice that I have heard many times regarding never to benchmark your condition’s progression with anyone else’s.
“On one hand I can see it being friendly encouragement, but on the other hand it’s close to going against the very good advice that I have heard many times regarding never to benchmark your condition’s progression with anyone else’s.”
Social Groups and PD World
Social Groups and PD World bring a social aspect to PD Buddy, inviting you to engage with the Parkinson’s community online and in your local area.
Social Groups are group chats that revolve around specific topics, such as ‘Women living with Parkinson’s’ and ‘Book Club’.
There were a good selection of different chat groups on the app that seemed to all have a positive, helpful atmosphere.
PD World, on the other hand, helps you find and chat with people with Parkinson’s in your local community. You can do this by tapping the globe icon, followed by your town or city.
Our reviewers generally liked the feature, with one calling it a “good idea” that many would find helpful. However, some noted that there weren’t many people actively posting.
“There were a good selection of different chat groups on the app that seemed to all have a positive, helpful atmosphere, although there didn’t seem to be particularly frequent interactions,” said one. “I thought it was amazing to see that the app had users all over the world!”
Pill reminders
Pill reminders let you log your medications and be notified when it’s time to take them.
PD Buddy includes a long list of Parkinson’s medications and supplements, including both generic and brand names.
There’s also a custom option for medications not listed, which can be especially useful for those with comorbidities. For each medication logged, you can select the amount you take and when you take it, and attach any notes or photos.
One person said:
“I thought it was a really good idea that the option was included to include a photo of each medication. I can see this being particularly useful if you were sharing this info with someone else – a carer for example.”
Unfortunately, this person was unable to get the notifications to appear on their phone. They contacted support but they weren’t able to help.
Another reviewer called the alerts “inconsistent”:
“I set [them] up 4 times a day [when] I take my pills, but it only seemed to remind me occasionally about one of them.”
You do need to manually allow notifications for PD Buddy in your phone’s settings in order to receive reminders, which can be easy to miss. If you haven’t done this, you should see an ‘Allow Notifications’ button on the app’s homescreen.
ParkiBot
There’s also an AI chatbot built into PD Buddy. You can ask ParkiBot questions about Parkinson’s, your symptoms and ways to manage them, and receive answers instantly.
“ParkiBot is a godsend for information and worth the download just for this feature,” said one reviewer.
Another reviewer was more sceptical about the inclusion of an AI assistant: “Personally, I feel that the chatbot feature should have a more prominent warning regarding using AI for personal medical advice.”
The chatbot feature should have a more prominent warning regarding using AI for personal medical advice.
It is important to talk to a healthcare professional before following any medical advice recommended by AI. The data chatbots are trained on can be out of date or outright incorrect, and some advice might not be suitable for you.
Using PD Buddy
One reviewer loved PD Buddy’s wide range of features: “Having videos for different exercises being all in one place … is a great time saver. The symptom tracker is a nice feature too [and] having help and tips from other users.”
Another felt that PD Buddy might be trying to cover too much ground: “I wondered whether it was currently trying to be too many things however, and whether it might benefit from concentrating on a few aspects rather than trying to do ‘everything’.”
Our reviewers also had mixed experiences integrating PD Buddy into their daily lives.
Two found the app “very easy” to integrate into their days. One particularly appreciated that they could access the app at any time and thought that “tracking feelings and symptoms was useful”.
Another person said that, despite really liking the app in general, there were issues that prevented them from integrating it fully into their daily routine.
“One of these was [that] the pill reminder function would not work for me,” they said. “The other was that it didn‘t seem to be possible to opt-out of certain categories in the ’Routine’ section. This meant that in its scoring system I would have constantly been getting 0 in certain areas, which didn’t entice me to continue that.”
I wondered … whether it might benefit from concentrating on a few aspects rather than trying to do ‘everything’.
Another reviewer found the app “very difficult” to integrate into their daily life: “I wanted to use the symptom tracker, but it only manages to record 1 instance. Even though I tried to use the same symptoms on other days, it failed to accept any of them.”
Value
PD Buddy is free to download and use. With this in mind, two reviewers thought the app was worth a try and would recommend it to a friend.
Good all-in-one app with some great features.
“Can’t really fault it at that price!” said one.
“Good all-in-one app with some great features,” said another.
The other two reviewers would not recommend the app, despite it being free.
“I only lost my time, which is a positive, I suppose,” said one reviewer, who rated both the value for money and overall quality of the app at two stars. “I liked the idea of the product, but it just didn’t work for me.”
“It’s my private point of view,” said the other unimpressed reviewer. “However, it could be very helpful to others.”