Bayer subsidiary BlueRock Therapeutics has signed with Rune Labs to use the neurology software and data platform company’s clinical trial tech to get a sharper picture of Parkinson’s disease patient activity and encourage better engagement in its cell therapy study.
The agreement marks the first operational use of Rune’s StriveStudy platform, with the aim of providing real-world, continuous capture of Parkinson's symptom data, the company said in a March 14 press release. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The Rune platform is designed to capture multimodal data from Parkinson's patients in order to understand the individual disease experience and build a data set to characterize baseline symptom activity. Rune Labs' Apple Watch-enabled data collection mean BlueRock can also remotely monitor patients.
“Parkinson's disease research has been limited in the past because there is no easy-to-measure, singular set of symptoms that each patient experiences—people with Parkinson's have a wide array of symptoms that vary from person to person and frequently fluctuate,” Rune Labs CEO Brian Pepin said in the release. “Together, BlueRock and Rune Labs will remotely collect longitudinal and objective data directly from patients to create a comprehensive image of Parkinson's symptoms.”
Last June, Rune received clearance from the FDA for the StrivePD software. It includes apps for both the iPhone and the Apple Watch that can automatically collect certain data points like physical activity, sleep patterns and vital signs as well as more disease-specific symptoms like dyskinesia and tremor, changes in gait and frequency of falls.
Users can also program medication reminders into the app and track adherence while adding in more qualitative symptoms like daily emotions and overall well-being.