Prisoner-tracking device helps doctors understand Parkinson's disease

Doctors are now able to understand and measure Parkinson’s disease better thanks to an electronic device used to track prisoners.

Doctors were unable to discover why Parkinson’s patients would often wake up feeling unwell for no apparent reason.

/ Courtesy of Buddi

But the Buddi wristband, an around-the-clock monitoring system, found that Parkinson’s sufferers can have sleep spasms that were previously unreported.

Businesswoman Sara Murray’s technology firm made the breakthrough.

The firm analyzed 3,000 wristbands to make the discovery and help doctors identify the problem.

Parkinson’s suffers were required to wear the wristband even while they slept to detect incidents such as falls on the way to the bathroom.

But the device also can detect restless sleep and this is how the spasms were discovered.