Digital Technology in Movement Disorders: Updates, Applications, and Challenges

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: Digital technology affords the opportunity to provide objective, frequent, and sensitive assessment of disease outside of the clinic environment. This article reviews recent literature on the application of digital technology in movement disorders, with a focus on Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Huntington’s disease. RECENT FINDINGS: Recent research has demonstrated the ability for digital technology to discriminate between individuals with and without PD, identify those at high risk for PD, quantify specific motor features, predict clinical events in PD, inform clinical management, and generate novel insights. SUMMARY: Digital technology has enormous potential to transform clinical research and care in movement disorders. However, more work is needed to better validate existing digital measures, including in new populations, and to develop new more holistic digital measures that move beyond motor features.