OneRing wearable is made to monitor Parkinson’s patients

OneRing

The story of OneRing starts in 1996 when the project’s creator Utkarsh Tandon watched the 1996 Olympics and the way Muhammad Ali’s movement was affected by his Parkinson’s disease. Twenty years later, he’s launching a project on Kickstarter to get preorders and early adopters.

Tandon came up with a smart ring that he hopes can bring the monitoring capabilities into local clinics while increasing awareness about the role of technology as a health aid. The user wears a ring during the day while the information about his/her movement is transferred via Bluetooth to an iOS app, and then to the cloud. From there, a physician can monitor the information and watch how the disease progresses over time.

The ring uses built-in accelerometer while the companion app relies on machine learning algorithms to compare the data with different issues associated with Parkinson’s, such as bradykinesia, dyskinesia and tremor. The application also records historical data to show movement severity at different dates and different times during the day. It also takes into account acceleration training data provided by the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Disease.

OneRing is small in scope, and only about a few dozen units will be made, 10 of which will be available to the general public.