The use of a handwriting app for diagnosis of Parkinson's disease for people living in rural and remote communities. A comparative study between people with early to mid-stage Parkinson's disease and age-matched healthy volunteers.

Analysis of the dynamics of sketching (drawing/tracing) using 2 parameters of measurement in combination - speed and pen pressure from the electronic drawing files of each participant.;; Analysis of the dynamics of writing text using 2 parameters of measurement in combination - speed and pen pressure from electronic handwriting files.

Parkinson’s disease is characterised by impaired motor function including stiffness, bradykinesia and tremor. These changes also affect hand writing causing changes in writing kinematics and pen pressure. Changes in hand writing may also be an early marker of Parkinson’s disease. Computerised graphic tablets are capable of analysing the dynamic aspects of writing. The aim of this study is to ascertain features of different hand writing tasks that are most useful in identifying differences in hand writing features between Parkinson’s disease patients and healthy age-matched controls using a computerised graphic tablet. The hypothesis is that Parkinson’s disease patients will exhibit significantly different dynamic features of hand writing compared with healthy age-matched controls.